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X 

V>.S?le  o%- 


SINBAD  AND  HIS  FRIENDS 


BY 

SIMEON  STRUNSKY 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1921 


COPTBIOHT,    1921 
BT 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  U.  ••  A. 


PREFACE 

Despite  superficial  indications  to  the  contrary,  the  pur 
pose  of  the  present  volume  is  a  very  serious  one.  The  book 
is  divided  into  two  parts  which  are  much  more  intimately 
connected  than  the  reader  may  suspect  at  first  sight.  Part 
I  deals  with  the  adventures  of  a  journalist  named  Sinbad 
in  the  city  of  Bagdad  in  the  dim  past  of  the  year  1917  of 
the  Christian  era.  Part  II  deals  with  the  adventures  of 
an  American  journalist  named  Williams  in  the  New  York 
of  the  year  1921. 

A  person  might  well  ask:  What  connection  can  there 
be,  on  the  one  hand,  between  Sinbad,  with  his  friends  the 
Caliph,  the  Principal  Censor,  the  Minister  of  High  and 
Low  Finance,  the  Chief  Secretary  of  Ways  and  Detours, 
the  Princess  Ayesha,  and  other  exotic  figures,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  perfectly  commonplace  Williams  with  his 
equally  normal  friends?  The  answer  is  simple. 

Across  the  gulf  of  Space  and  Time  the  reader  will  dis 
cern  the  ties  of  a  common  humanity  between  the  two  men. 
He  will  be  struck  with  a  definite  resemblance  between  the 
thoughts,  the  feelings,  and  even  the  concrete  problems  of 
two  epochs  and  two  civilizations.  If  Williams,  in  our  own 
town  and  in  our  own  day,  seems  to  be  thinking  and  say 
ing  very  much  the  same  things  as  Sinbad  in  his  alien 
environment,  it  is  not  at  all  a  case  of  mere  repetition.  It 
is  only  a  case  of  the  fundamental  sameness  of  human 
nature. 

In  this  the  unity  of  the  book  consists. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 

SINBAD 

VAGE 

STORY  OF  THE  MARCH  OF  DEMOCRACY  ....  3 
STORY  OF  THE  BOLSHEVIK  MIDDLEMAN  AND  THE  CA 
LIPH'S  RELAPSE 8 

STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH'S  TROUBLES      .       .       .       .  13 
STORY  OF  THE  SUPPRESSED  DESIRE  AND  THE  INFLATED 

CIRCULATION 19 

STORY  OF  THE  TRUE  BELIEVERS 25 

STORY  OF  FATIMA  AND  THE  BOND-SALESMAN      .       .  30 

STORY  OF  THE  ENTANGLED  LEGISLATOR      .       .       .  36 

STORY  OF  THE  BEWILDERED  BRIDEGROOM  .       .       .  41 

STORY  OF  THE  UNPLEASANT  TASK      ....  46 

STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  APAWAMIS      .       .       .  51 

STORY  OF  THE  TROUBLED  FOUR 57 

STORY  OF  THE  TROUBLED  FOUR  (Continued)     .       .  62 

STORY  OF  THE  WOMEN  WHO  STOOD  STILL       .       .  67 

STORY  OF  THE  COST  OF  LIVING   .       .       .       .       .  73 

STORY  OF  THE  WOMEN  WHO  DID  NOT  STAND  STILL  79 
STORY  OF  THE  BARMECIDE  AND  THE  AFTER-DINNER 

SPEAKER 84 

STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  RENTING  AGENT  .  89 


vi  CONTENTS 

MM 

STORY  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  CENSOR  AND  THE  ULCER 
ATED  BICUSPID 94 

STORY  OF  THE  CONGESTED  WAR  WORKERS        .       .  100 
STORY  OF  WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR      .       .  105 
STORY  OF  WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR   (Con 
tinued)      .       . no 

STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  BURNT  CAKES      .  116 

STORY  OF  THE  Two  WEARY  TRAFFICKERS        .       .  121 
STORY  OF  SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS     .       .       .       .126 

STORY  OF  SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS  (Continued)     .  133 
STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  MODIFIED  GARY 

SYSTEM     .       .       .       • I37 

STORY  OF  THE  DISCOURAGED  ORACLE         .       .       .142 
STORY  OF  THE  COUNCIL  OF  ELDERS  AND  THE  NEWER 

IMMIGRATION   . *47 

STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  COSMIC  URGE       .  152 
STORY  OF  SINBAD'S  DEPARTURE  FROM  BAGDAD  FOR 

POINTS  NORTH  AND  WEST 157 


PART  II 

WILLIAMS 

THEY 165 

CHEERFUL  GIVERS I71 

REALISM !76 

KNIGHTS  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 181 

WISDOM  OF  THE  EAST 186 

ON  THE  FLOOR  OF  THE  LIBRARY 19 T 


CONTENTS  vii 

AMta 
TRUMPET  CALLS  TO  DUTY    .       .       .       .       .       .196 

THE  REINDEER  AND  THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE        .       .  201 
THE  FILING  CABINET  AND  THE  CHILD  .       .       .       .206 

VOICE  OF  THE  PEOPLE 211 

ADVENTURES  or  THE  LITERAL  MINDED  PEDESTRIAN  .  216 

OUR  HIGHER  SELVES 221 

THE  DANGEROUS  AGE 226 

PATERNAL  AFFECTION — A  PERIL 232 

SURGICAL 237 

STANDING  ROOM  ONLY 242 

FARMERS 247 

COMPLEXES  IN  ORION 252 

FALLACY  OF  DISTANCE 257 


PART  I 
SINBAD 


NOTE 

Sinbad's  story  begins  rather  abruptly.  But  it  is  not  at 
all  difficult  to  reconstruct  the  substance  of  the  missing 
chapters.  Plainly  Sinbad  is  the  name  bestowed  by  the 
people  of  Bagdad,  for  some  unknown  reason,  upon  an 
American  newspaper  man  who  arrived  in  the  capital  of 
Mesopotamia  shortly  after  that  country  had  thrown  in  its 
fortunes  with  the  Allies  in  the  war  against  the  Empire  of 
Madagascar.  When  the  story  opens,  Sinbad  has  evidently 
won  a  place  of  confidence  and  friendship  with  pretty  nearly 
everybody  in  Mesopotamia. 


STORY  OF  THE  MARCH  OF  DEMOCRACY 

I  HAVE  seen  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  in  his 
thoughts  before  this,  but  never  in  such  somber  mood. 
His  eyes  were  upon  me  as  I  made  the  customary  triple 
prostration,  but  only  when  I  was  in  my  usual  place  on  the 
edge  of  the  rug  did  he  speak. 

"  Draw  nearer,  Sinbad,"  he  said  gently. 

I  moved  forward  to  within  one  meter  (39.37  inches) 
from,  the  royal  divan,  beyond  which  it  is  given  only  to  the 
Head  Gardener  and  the  Chief  of  the  General  Staff  to  ap 
proach. 

"  I  was  thinking,  Sinbad,  of  this  sorry  business  of  king 
ship,"  he  said.  "  We  rulers  have  fallen  on  evil  days.  As 
our  poet  Firdusi  has  said,  '  We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are 
made  of,  and  our  little  life — '  " 

But  at  this  moment  the  curtains  of  the  royal  apartment 
were  swept  apart  and  the  Principal  Censor  threw  himself 
before  his  master's  feet. 

"  Sire,"  he  cried,  "  a  woeful  thing  has  happened.  That 
unprincipled  dog  of  an  editor  of  the  Bazaar  Gazette  has 
given  aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemy  by  stating  in  the  Ship 
ping  Intelligence  column  that  high  water  at  the  port  of 
Basra  next  Wednesday  will  be  at  11:52  A.  M.  and  10:38 
P.  M." 

The  Caliph  looked  long  and  fixedly  at  the  Principal 
Censor. 

3 


4  SINBAD 

"  Unquestionably  this  calls  for  hanging  and  quartering," 
he  said.  "What  puzzles  me  is  whether  it  should  be  you 
or  the  editor  of  the  Bazaar  Gazette" 

"  Mercy,  Indescribable  One,"  pleaded  the  Censor. 

"  Very  well,"  said  the  Caliph.    "  Let  it  be  the  editor." 

And  when  the  Censor  had  departed: 

"  I  was  saying,  Sinbad,  that  time  has  made  naught  of  us 
kings.  I  sit  here  and  think,  What  am  I?  And  the  answer 
is,  Shadow  and  dust.  They  think  they  please  me  by  saying 
the  Caliph  can  do  no  wrong.  They  leap  up  and  shout, 
'The  Caliph  is  dead!  Long  live  the  Caliph!  '  But  the 
man  who  cannot  err,  the  man  who  cannot  even  die,  oh  Sin- 
bad,  is  he  a  man  at  all?  " 

"  More  and  less  than  that,  your  Majesty,"  I  said.  "  You 
are  one  in  a  glorious  succession — " 

"  Aye,  that  is  it,"  he  cried.  "  Our  fame,  we  kings,  is 
that  of  a  link  in  the  chain.  We  live  in  history  as  Selim 
the  Bald,  as  Saladin  the  Bowlegged,  as  Ali  the  Henpecked, 
so  distinguished  from  other  Selims,  Saladins,  and  Alis. 
The  future  will  know  me  as  Harun  the  Fifty-ninth,  and 
little  else.  Harun  the  Fifty-ninth,"  he  repeated  bitterly. 
"  How  does  that  strike  your  ear?  " 

"Ineffable  One,"  I  said,  "  since  you  so  command,  it 
sounds  like  a  subway  station." 

"  Precisely,"  he  said.  "  And  our  business  is  like  our 
names.  Once  upon  a  time  kings  were  kings.  To-day  we 
wear  silk  hats  at  garden  parties,  we  bestow  the  order  of 
Kappa  Upsilon  on  distinguished  visitors,  and  every  little 
while  we  abdicate.  As  Saadi  has  said:  '  Our  little  systems 
have  their  day,  they  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be.' " 


THE  MARCH  OF  DEMOCRACY         5 

"  Yet  your  subjects  offer  up  prayers  for  you  and  they 
call  you  Father  of  your  People,"  I  said. 

"  To  my  face,  yes,  but  how  is  it — " 

Once  more  the  curtains  were  torn  apart  and  the  Principal 
Censor  precipitated  himself  into  our  midst. 

"  Sire,"  he  ejaculated,  holding  up  his  scissors  and  mucilage 
pot  as  if  in  tribute,  "  the  editor  of  the  Bagdad  Buzzer,  in  a 
leading  article  on  the  financial  situation,  refers  to  the  Grand 
Vizier  as  an  ass." 

The  Caliph's  brow  darkened. 

"  Well,  it  is  a  fact,  is  it  not?  "  he  asked. 

"  Your  pardon,  Magnificence,"  cried  the  Censor.  "  That 
is  all  the  more  reason  why  the  statement  should  be  sup 
pressed.  And  besides,  August  One,  it  discriminates  against 
the  other  members  of  your  Cabinet." 

The  Caliph  sighed. 

"  Very  well,  censor  it,"  he  said. 

"  But  the  question  is  how,  Illuminance?  "  said  the  Cen 
sor.  "  Shall  we  make  it  read  '  The is  an  ass,'  or 

*  The  Grand  Vizier  is  an ?  '  " 

The  Caliph  pondered. 

"  Run  the  two  versions  one  after  the  other,"  he  said. 
"  That  will  serve  to  confuse  the  enemy." 

The  Principal  Censor  eliminated  himself  backward.  The 
Caliph  moistened  his  lips  with  his  tongue  and  went  on: 

"  You  were  saying,  Sinbad?  Oh,  yes,  about  the  people 
praying  for  their  kings.  But  that,  too,  is  form.  The  people 
will  pray  for  anybody  that  collects  the  taxes.  Take  now 
the  one  ruler  among  the  Infidels  who  does  pretend  to  the 
manners  and  outlook  of  a  king.  I  refer  to  Wullahim,  the 


6  SINBAD 

Kaisar-il-Alleman.  His  nobles  bow  down  before  him  and 
call  him  Viceregent  of  Allah.  But  let  him  touch  these 
nobles  and  landowners  in  their  interests  and  what  then? 
1  Give  us  a  fifty  per  cent,  tariff  on  pickled  tripe,  Anointed 
of  Allah,'  they  cry,  '  or  thy  throne  goes  rolling  into  the 
dust!  '  That  is  kingship  in  these  parlous  days,  my  Sin- 
bad." 

I  forbore  to  intrude  on  his  sorrow,  and  contented  myself 
with  scratching  the  tip  of  my  nose,  which  itched  painfully. 
He  spoke  with  sudden  eagerness. 

"  Tell  me  about  this  new  fashion  they  call  democracy, 
Sinbad.  Why  do  nations  go  mad  over  it?  Is  it  cheaper 
than  kingship?  " 

"  Far  otherwise,  your  Majesty,"  I  told  him. 

"  That  is  strange,"  he  said.  "  We,  with  our  palaces  and 
establishments,  come  high  for  the  people." 

"  But  what  is  that  to  the  cost  of  electing  the  Chief  Mag 
istrate  of  a  republic?  "  I  said.  "  Just  figure  it  out  for 
yourself,  Sublime  One.  Your  Civil  List  is  how  much?  " 

"  Three  million  sequins  a  year/'  he  said. 

"  And  your  Majesty's  unctuous  reign  has  endured  how 
long?  " 

"  Twenty-five  years,"  He  said. 

"  That  makes  seventy-five  million  sequins,"  I  said,  after 
making  the  calculation  in  my  note-book.  "  Now,  in  some 
republics  they  will  have  had  six  elections  of  a  Chief  Mag 
istrate  in  'twenty-five  years,  at  a  cost  of  at  least  twenty- 
five  million  sequins  an  election,  if  you  count  the  actual 
campaign  expenditure,  the  service  of  taking  the  poll  of 
twenty  million  voters,  the  stagnation  of  business,  and  the 


THE  MARCH  OF  DEMOCRACY         7 

pitiful  waste  of  white  paper  in  the  form  of  editorials,  au 
thorized  interviews,  and  disavowals  of  such  interviews.  Fig 
ure  out  for  yourself,  Majesty,  the  money  cost  for  a  people 
that  goes  every  four  years  to  the  verge  of  nervous  prostra 
tion." 

The  Caliph's  eyes  glittered. 

"  Now  by  the  Shaven  Eyebrows  of  the  Dumb  Hermit  of 
Kandahar,"  he  cried,  "but  that  must  be  the  life!  Once 
every  four  years  1  I  would — "  But  he  checked  himself. 

"  Well,  then,  Sinbad,  does  democracy  work  more  smoothly 
than  kingship?  "  he  said. 

"  Your  indulgence,  Unparalleled  One,"  I  said.  "  Democ 
racy  operates  like  a  flat  wheel  on  a  rural  trolley  car  in  the 
dewy  silences  of  a  July  night." 

"  Then  why—" 

"  Democracy,  oh  King,"  I  said,  in  my  most  impressive 
manner,  like  the  President  of  the  University  at  the  com 
mencement  exercises  of  the  School  of  Journalism,  "  De 
mocracy  is  even  like  Marriage.  For  people  are  always  say 
ing  of  these  two,  Is  it  a  Failure?  Is  it  a  Success?  And 
before  they  know  it  their  fate  is  upon  them.  So,  too — " 

"  Majesty,"  gasped  the  Principal  Censor,  sliding  in  feet 
foremost,  "  the  editor  of  the  Evening  Turban  is  spreading 
abroad  an  impression  of  national  disunion  by  speaking  of 
the  irrepressible  sex-conflict — " 

The  Caliph  flung  his  damask  cushion,  and  hit  the  Col 
lector  of  Widows'  Pensions,  who  chanced  to  enter  at  that 
moment. 


STORY  OF  THE  BOLSHEVIK  MIDDLEMAN 
AND  THE  CALIPH'S  RELAPSE 

DURING  my  first  fortnight  in  Bagdad  the  visible 
stocks  of  honey  in  the  bazaars  were  almost  wiped 
out.  Simultaneously  prices  attained  an  unprecedented 
level.  Khorassan  fancy  prime  rose  from  13  maravedis  the 
pound  to  58  maravedis.  Nineveh  middlings,  the  great 
staple  of  the  poor,  went  up  from  7  maravedis  to  46.  Among 
the  populace  of  the  Maghreb  or  West  Side,  which  is  the 
workingmen's  quarter,  there  was  seething  discontent.  So 
the  trusty  Mesrour  reported  to  the  Commander  of  the 
Faithful. 

Thereupon  his  Majesty,  having  wrathfully  plucked  at 
his  beard  for  some  time,  sent  for  the  Pomegranate  and  Jam 
Director  and  the  Minister  of  Indeterminate  Equations,  who 
were  jointly  investigating  the  problem  of  high  prices  and 
scarcity.  As  it  happened,  the  Pomegranate  and  Jam  Di 
rector  was  out  of  town  in  connection  with  his  dehydrated 
fig  campaign,  but  the  Minister  of  Indeterminate  Equa 
tions  declared  that  he  was  ready  to  answer  all  questions. 
To  that  end  he  brought  with  him  three  camel-loads  of 
wholesale  prices,  a  complete  set  of  blue-prints  in  a  piano 
case,  and  a  twelve-cylinder  counting  machine. 

"  Abu  Ramshyd,"  said  his  Majesty,  after  the  operation 
of  the  counting  machine  had  been  explained  to  him,  "  why 
should  the  price  of  honey  have  increased  700  per  cent.?  " 

8 


THE  BOLSHEVIK  MIDDLEMAN         9 

"  Sire,"  replied  the  Minister  of  Indeterminate  Equations, 
"  the  problems  of  honey  production  and  distribution  are 
exceedingly  complicated.  A  brief  glance  through  theee  350 
pages  will  show  you  that  as  a  result  of  the  home  garden 
campaign,  one  and  seven-tenths  per  cent,  of  our  garden 
area  has  been  diverted  from  flower  culture  to  pumpkins 
and  millet.  At  the  same  time  this  thin-paper  volume  of 
1,265  Pages  from  the  Imperial  Weather  Bureau  will  show 
that  the  average  amount  of  daily  sunlight  in  the  course  of 
the  last  six  months  has  declined  by  ninety-one  hundredths 
of  one  per  cent.  The  effect  on  the  bee  industry  of  a  de 
clining  sun  ratio  and  a  restricted  flower  supply  is  obvious. 
It  is  the  war,  Majesty." 

"  Now  by  the  beard  of  the  Conductor  of  the  Bagdad 
Symphony,"  cried  the  Caliph,  "  will  you  tell  me,  Abu  Ram- 
shyd,  why  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  should  affect  the  aver 
age  daily  precipitation  of  sunlight?  " 

"  Majesty,"  said  the  Minister  of  Indeterminate  Equa 
tions,  "  on  that  point  our  data  are  not  complete.  The  rea 
son  may  be  that  the  regular  clerk  of  the  Weather  Bureau 
has  been  drafted  and  his  substitute  is  a  young  man  who 
does  not  always  add  up  his  figures  correctly.  The  fact 
remains  that  it  costs  one  and  a  half  maravedis  more  than 
a  year  ago  to  produce  a  pound  of  honey.  This  leaves  us 
only  an  increase  of  thirty-seven  and  one-half  maravedis  to 
account  for;  which  is  easily  explained  by  increased  over 
head." 

"  Overhead  or  underhand,  I  wonder  which,"  mumbled 
the  Caliph,  whose  occasional  lapses  into  a  low  form  of 
humor  the  reader  will  soon  be  accustomed  to.  And  then, 


io  SINBAD 

seriously:  "  What  remedy,  then,  do  you  suggest,  Abu  Ram- 
shy  d?  Shall  we  get  after  the  rascally  middlemen  in  the 
bazaars?  " 

"  Indubitable  One,"  said  the  Minister  of  Indeterminate 
Equations,  "  it  is  unscientific  and  out  of  consonance  with 
the  modern  spirit  to  assail  individuals.  I  suggest  an  in 
creased  appropriation  for  twelve  additional  clerks  and  the 
purchase  of  a  self-silencing  dictograph.  In  that  way  we 
shall  get  at  the  truth  before  many  months." 

But  when  the  Minister  of  Indeterminate  Equations  had 
departed,  the  faithful  Mesrour  prostrated  himself  before 
the  royal  couch  and  said,  after  his  characteristic  untutored 
fashion:  "  Sire,  I  know  nothing  about  ichthyology,  but 
the  traders  in  the  bazaar  are  gouging  the  poor.  Your  an 
cestors  would  have  known  how  to  go  about  it." 

The  Caliph  pondered. 

"  As  a  modern  ruler,"  he  murmured,  "  I  ought  to  prefer 
the  dictograph  and  the  Weather  Bureau.  As  a  descendant 
of  the  Prophet —  Come,  Mesrour,  let  us  see  for  ourselves." 

But  when  they  had  turned  into  the  bazaar,  they  stood 
still  at  the  sight  of  a  ragged  graybeard  who  sat  half  asleep 
in  a  corner  with  an  ancient  horn  lantern  by  his  side. 

"  Well  met,  old  Diogenes,"  cried  the  Caliph.  "  We  are 
now  much  in  the  same  line  of  business.  What  say  you? 
Shall  we  find  an  honest  retail  distributor  by  dint  of  search 
ing?  " 

Diogenes  glanced  up  feebly. 

"  There  may  be  one  or  two,  oh  Stranger,"  he  said.  "  But 
the  price  of  illuminating  oil  has  gone  up  900  per  cent., 
cotton  wicks  are  50  maravedis  apiece,  and  I  simply  cannot 


THE  BOLSHEVIK  MIDDLEMAN       n 

afford  to  keep  my  lantern  going.    You  are  welcome  to  it." 

They  declined  his  offer  with  thanks  and  made  their  way 
into  a  retailer's  booth,  where  Mesrour  painfully  sorted 
out  the  sum  of  forty-six  maravedis  from  his  wages,  placed 
them  on  the  counter  and  asked  for  a  pound  of  honey,  Nineveh 
middling. 

"  The  price  is  now  fifty-one  maravedis,"  said  the  trader. 
"  Because  of  the  earthquake  in  Malabar." 

Mesrour  hardly  needed  the  wink  from  the  Caliph.  He 
leaped  forward  and  the  trader  was  lying  face  down  on  his 
own  counter. 

"  As  a  progressive  monarch,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  I  bow 
my  head  to  the  inexorable  sway  of  economic  law.  As  an 
inheritor  of  the  old  Arabian  blood,  I  shall  now  request  the 
good  Mesrour  to  unroll  his  camePs-hide  whip  and  bestow 
forty  lashes  where  it  will  do  most  good.  Allah  be  with 
you,  my  son." 

"  Merciful  One,"  cried  the  unhappy  trader,  recognizing 
his  visitor,  "  bid  your  companion  to  let  me  go,  and  I  shall 
look  through  my  books  again.  I  feel  convinced  that  a  more 
careful  examination  will  reveal  that  my  overhead  is  not 
as  large  as  I  supposed  it  to  be." 

"  Very  well,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  and  remember,  it's  two 
lashes  off  for  every  per  cent,  down  in  your  overhead." 

At  the  meat  stall  before  which  they  next  halted,  prices 
were  10  per  cent,  up  over  yesterday. 

"  Why?  "  demanded  the  Caliph. 

"  Stranger,"  said  the  slaughterer,  smoothing  his  eyebrows 
in  the  reflection  of  his  brass  scales,  "  the  cost  of  electric 
light  has  gone  up  50  per  cent.,  service  135  per  cent.,  boards 


12  SINE  AD 

for  shelving  456  per  cent.,  meat  hooks  875  per  cent.,  and 
wrapping  paper  2,000  per  cent.  I  have  spoken." 

"  Take  him,  Mesrour,"  said  the  Caliph,  and  once  more 
a  badly  frightened  tradesman  pledged  himself  to  a  revision 
of  the  law  of  supply  and  demand.  The  Caliph's  temper 
was  sadly  frayed. 

"  Remember,"  he  said,  pausing  in  the  doorway,  "  if  I 
find  you  at  your  old  tricks,  I'll  have  you  ranged  on  the 
lowest  gallows  in  Bagdad." 

"  The  tallest,  you  mean,  Majesty,"  cried  the  tradesman, 
who  in  the  midst  of  his  fright  kept  his  head  for  exact  fig 
ures. 

"  The  lowest,"  replied  the  Caliph,  grimly.  "  Hemp  hav 
ing  gone  up  543  per  cent.,  I  have  little  rope  to  waste  on 
scurvy  rascals  like  you." 

But,  as  they  walked  home,  a  sore  doubt  beset  him. 

"  I  have  backslidden,  Mesrour,  I  have  relapsed.  As  a 
modern  ruler  I  should  have  waited  till  the  Minister  of  In 
determinate  Equations  had  investigated  these  fellows,  in 
1926,  and  the  courts  had  punished  them,  in  1937.  I  am 
but  imperfectly  civilized.  Allah  pity  me." 


STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH'S  TROUBLES 

THE  monarch  was  in  Cabinet  session  when  I  sent  in 
my  card  marked  "  Urgent."  Within  five  minutes 
I  was  ordered  to  enter  the  presence.  As  I  crawled  into  the 
royal  chamber,  several  members  of  the  Cabinet  came  crawl 
ing  out,  and  I  collided  with  the  Minister  of  Internal  Rev 
enue. 

"  You  will  pardon  the  delay,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Caliph, 
"  but  we  were  cleaning  up  the  final  details  of  the  Princess 
Ayesha's  wedding,  and  you  know  the  Grand  Vizier.  He 
was  under  the  impression  that  we  were  discussing  the  eccle 
siastical  budget,  and  every  little  while  he  had  to  be  re 
minded." 

"  It  is  precisely  on  that  business  that  I  have  come,  your 
Majesty,"  I  said.  "  I  have  received  orders  from  my  man 
aging  editor  to  send  a  thousand  words  by  day  cable  on  the 
marriage  of  the  Princess  Ayesha  (may  Allah  bless  her 
posterity)  to  the  young  Khan  of  Turkestan,  fifty  words 
on  the  political  significance  of  the  alliance  and  nine  hun 
dred  and  fifty  words  about  the  trousseau." 

"  It  is  long  and  expensive,"  said  the  Caliph,  and  sighed. 

I  emitted  a  discreet  cluck  of  sympathy. 

"  Sore  indeed  must  be  the  affliction,  oh  Enlightened  One," 
I  said,  "  thus  to  part  with  a  beloved  daughter  whose  beauty, 
I  have  it  on  the  best  authority,  is  like  the  full  moon  over 

13 


i4  SINE  AD 

the  palm  trees,  and  whose  disposition,  I  have  been  in 
formed,  is  even  like  the  gazelles  of  Khorassan." 

"  True,  Sinbad,"  he  said.    "  And  yet,  know  you,  it  is  a 
relief,  too." 

I  gurgled  something  non-committal. 
"  You  have  never  had  the  giving  of  a  modern  daughter 
in  marriage,  have  you,  Sinbad?  " 

"  That  felicity  has  been  denied  me,  Majesty,"  I  said. 
"When  I  first  broaclied  the  subject  to  her,"  said  the 
Caliph,  "  I  naturally  felt  it  my  duty  to  devote  a  few  well- 
chosen  words  to  its  solemn  implications.  But  she  inter 
rupted  me.  '  Papa,'  she  said,  '  you  know  as  well  as  I  do 
that  marriage  is  a  legalized  device  for  the  perpetuation  of 
the  race,  so  why  pretend?  '  Know  you  how  old  is  the 
Princess  Ayesha?  " 

"Not  more  than  eighteen,"  I  said.  "How  else  could 
it  be?  " 

He  sighed  again. 

"  She  told  me,  however,  that  she  rather  liked  the  young 
Khan  of  Turkestan  and  thought  he  would  make  a  good 
husband." 

"  But  surely  the  two  could  have  never  met,"  I  said,  mind 
ful  of  the  old  Moslem  etiquette  on  the  mingling  of  the 
sexes. 

"  She  saw  him  in  the  Bazaar  when  he  made  his  official 
entry,"  he  said. 

"  The  Princess  Ayesha  in  the  Bazaar,"  I  cried,  more  and 
more  astonished. 

"  Disguised,  of  course,  as  a  peddler  of  sunflower  seed," 
he  said;  "  the  disguise  she  regularly  assumes  when  engaged 


THE  CALIPH'S  TROUBLES  15 

in  her  scientific  diet  campaigns  among  the  poor.  But  when 
I  expressed  my  satisfaction,  and  ventured  a  few  necessary 
commonplaces  on  the  rights  and  obligations  of  wedlock, 
she  said:  '  Above  all  things,  no  cheap  sentiment,  Papa. 
There's  just  one  basic  principle  to  marriage,  and  I  intend 
to  live  up  to  it:  No  annexations  and  no  indemnities.' 
There  was  no  use  in  arguing.  Three  days  from  now  she 
will  be  on  her  way  to  Turkestan." 

I  waited  diplomatically. 

"As  I  said,"  resumed  the  Caliph,  "it's  a  relief.  You 
can  hardly  imagine  what  a  nervous  strain  these  modern 
young  people  are  to  us  of  an  older  generation.  It's  so  hard 
to  find  out  just  where  they  stand.  The  Princess  Ayesha 
will  come  in  from  one  of  her  diet-kitchen  trips  and  remind 
me  how  the  children  of  the  poor  swarm  in  the  back  streets 
of  Bagdad.  The  little  boys,  she  tells  me,  are  all  growing 
up  to  be  gangsters  and  the  little  girls — it  keeps  me  awake 
nights,  Sinbad." 

"  Strange,"  I  said,  "  that  one  so  young  should  take  no  joy 
in  life." 

"  Who  doesn't?  "  he  demanded  sharply. 

"  The  Princess  Ayesha,"  I  replied. 

"Don't  be  a  fool,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "The  Princess 
Ayesha  is  the  best-dressed  woman  in  the  palace.  She 
dances  like  a  professional,  plays  four  string  instruments, 
the  tuba,  and  the  kettledrums,  and  swims  the  fifty  yards 
in  the  seraglio  tank  in  forty-one  seconds.  She  has  been 
after  me  to  lay  out  a  golf  links  at  my  summer  residence 
close  to  the  ruins  of  Nineveh,  where  there  are  all  kinds  of 
natural  hazards,  she  says.  But  I  haven't  dared.  Mon- 


1 6  SINE  AD 

archy  isn't  such  a  safe  business  nowadays  at  best.  It's  un 
fair." 

"  What  is  unfair,  Desirable  One?  "  I  said. 

"  This  habit  the  young  have  of  harrowing  our  middle- 
aged  nerves,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  Their  own  nerves  can 
stand  it  very  well,  don't  you  see.  Ayesha  will  tell  me  that 
the  ravages  of  tuberculosis  in  the  poor  districts  of  Bagdad 
are  something  dreadful.  It  is  not  to  be  denied.  And  I  say 
to  myself,  '  Allah  help  me,  what  is  to  be  done,  what  is  to 
be  done?  Is  it  my  duty  perhaps  to  abdicate?  '  Then  I 
look  up  and  find  AyesBa  eating  marshmallows.  I  was  thor 
oughly  unhappy  for  three  days  after  Ayesha  told  me  about 
the  little  boys  who  were  growing  up  to  be  criminals  and 
the  little  girls,  but  she  went  off  to  a  dance  at  my  brother's 
house." 

He  tapped  the  heel  of  his  slipper  with  the  edge  of  his 
scimitar  and  looked  thoughtfully  out  of  the  window. 

"The  trousseau,  Anointed  One,"  I  ventured  to  remind 
him. 

"Except  that  it  comes  from  Paris  and  is  very  costly,  I 
can  tell  you  little,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  We  were  just  dis 
cussing  it  at  the  Cabinet  meeting.  I  showed  the  Minister 
of  High  and  Low  Finance  the  list  Ayesha  had  made  out, 
and  he  said  it  would  necessitate  a  two  per  cent,  tax  on  fig 
exports  in  addition  to  the  abandonment  of  the  Bureau  of 
Polar  Exploration.  I  had  talked  it  all  over  with  Ayesha. 
I  had  suggested  that  on  the  occasion  of  her  wedding  there 
should  be  a  distribution  of  bread  and  oil-cake  to  the  popu 
lace.  'That's  right/  she  laughed,  'a  handful  of  charity 


THE  CALIPH'S  TROUBLES  17 

now  and  then  to  keep  them  quiet.'  I  was  very  angry. 
*  Ayesha,'  I  said,  c  I  am  the  father  of  my  people.'  She 
said,  '  Papa,  you  know  you  are  only  one  of  the  exploiting 
classes,  and  the  biggest  of  the  lot.  A  dozen  morning  robes 
is  not  enough/  and  she  crossed  out  12  and  wrote  in  36. 
Sometimes  Fam  tempted  to  believe  that  Ayesha  is  frivo 
lous." 

"  Compassion  for  my  temerity,"  I  cried,  "  but  it  is  not 
so.  My  head  upon  it  that  the  Princess  is  sincere." 

"  And  the  thirty-six  morning  robes?  "  he  asked. 

"  Quite  so,  Beneficence,"  I  said.  "  The  Princess  Aye 
sha  is  even  like  that  Paris  which  has  furnished  her  royal 
wedding  gear.  You  know  the  nation  of  the  French,  Maj 
esty?  " 

"  Very  little,"  he  said,  "  except  that  it  is  a  valorous  peo 
ple,  considering  it  be  an  infidel  nation,  and  that  the  lan 
guage  is  curious.  I  have  looked  into  the  Princess  Ayesha's 
exercise  books.  Instead  of  saying,  l  What  is  that?  '  they 
say,  '  What  is  this  which  it  is  which  that?  '  or  in  their  own 
language,  '  Kesskessesskessah?  '  Instead  of  saying,  '  My 
brother's  pink  woolen  dressing-gown,7  they  say,  '  The  robe 
of  the  chamber  of  wool  of  pink  of  my  brother.' " 

"  Majesty,  the  French  are  in  the  habit  of  saying  worse 
things  than  that,"  I  told  him.  "  But  they  have  also  said 
much  better  things.  They  have  given  to  the  world  its 
frivolous  literature  and  its  battle-slogans.  They  are  the 
nation  of  the  yellow-backed  novel  in  paper  at  3  francs  75 
centimes  and  cheap  at  one-fifth  the  price,  and  they  are  the 
nation  of  Valmy  and  Verdun.  Simultaneously  they  have 


1 8  SINBAD 

given  to  civilization  its  millinery  and  its  Marne.  The  se 
cret,  of  course,  is  eternal  youth.  Even  so  with  the  Princess 
Ayesha." 

"You  congratulate,  then,  the  young  Khan  of  Turke 
stan?  "  he  asked  thoughtfully. 

"  His  will  not  be  a  dull  life,"  I  said. 


STORY  OF  THE  SUPPRESSED  DESIRE  AND  THE 
INFLATED  CIRCULATION 

ANXIOUS  to  communicate  the  contents  of  my  tele 
gram  to  his  Majesty  without  loss  of  time,  I  injected 
myself  into  the  royal  presence  with  unusual  precipitancy. 
I  was  at  the  end  of  my  fourth  prostration  and  about  a  foot 
and  a  half,  roughly,  from  'the  Sacred  Divan  when  I  became 
aware  that  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  was  not  alone. 
On  a  cretonne  cushion  at  his  feet  knelt  the  Minister-Gen 
eral  of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes,  and  the  two  were  evidently 
in  earnest  consultation. 

To  put  on  brakes  and  apply  the  reverse  crawl,  or,  as  it  is 
known  popularly,  the  Diplomatic  Glide,  was  but  the  work 
of  a  moment.  I  was  already  half-way  through  the  brocade 
curtains  when  his  Majesty  deigned  to  take  notice  of  my 
unworthy  presence,  and  beckoned  to  me  to  return. 

"  You  may  be  the  man  we  want,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  The 
Minister  of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes  has  been  showing  me  a 
copy  of  the  Bagdad  Monthly  Mess,  the  latest  publication 
to  be  excluded  from  the  mails  by  his  personal  order.  He 
has  just  called  my  attention  to  a  peculiarly  obnoxious  car 
toon,  as  he  considers  it.  What  do  you  think,  Sinbad?  " 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  read  his  Majesty's  thoughts 
from  his  intonation  or  the  glint  in  his  eye.  So  I  glanced 
hurriedly  at  the  cartoon  and  said: 

19 


20  SINBAD 

"  Impenetrable  One,  it  is  a  question  of  how  you  look 
at  it." 

"Naturally,  you  look  at  it  right  side  up,"  the  Caliph 
snapped,  and  there  was  no  longer  any  doubt  as  to  what  the 
proper  answer  might  be. 

"  Sire,"  I  said,  "  the  technique  of  the  picture  is  marvel 
ous.  The  man  is  a  master  of  line  and  shade." 

"  It  is  more  than  that,  it  is  awfully  clever,"  declared  his 
Majesty.  "  The  whole  paper  is  amusing.  Vulgar,  to  be 
sure,  but  refreshing.  I  like  the  title.  I  like  the  motto: 
'Tabasco  for  Grandmother!  '  I  like  the  Board  of  Editors. 
There  are  seventeen  responsible  editors  and  thirty-six  ad 
visory  editors,  and  all  of  them  serious.  Now,  would  you 
exclude  a  publication  like  that  from  the  mails?  " 

"  Sooner  would  I  cut  off  my  right  hand,  Infallible  One," 
I  declared,  with  a  fervor  of  conviction  which  surprised  me 
as  much  as  any  one  in  the  royal  chamber. 

The  Minister-General  of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes  smiled 
sardonically. 

"  Sinbad  is  hardly  an  unprejudiced  witness,  August  Suc 
cessor,"  he  said.  "  He  is  something  of  a  journalist  him 
self,  though  harmless.  The  point  is  that  this  clever  sheet, 
which  no  doubt  it  is,  though  I  never  read  it,  speaks  of  your 
Majesty  as  a  weakling,  and  calls  the  war  against  Mada 
gascar  a  crime.  It  is  a  public  menace." 

The  Caliph  was  quick  to  take  him  up. 

"  But  if  you  never  read  the  paper,  Burru-el-Hassan,  how 
do  you  know?  " 

"  It  is  perfectly  simple,  Uncontradictable  One.  I  my 
self  have  no  leisure,  of  course,  for  that  sort  of  thing,  my 


THE  SUPPRESSED  DESIRE  21 

time  being  entirely  taken  up  with  the  elimination  of  waste 
in  the  Division  of  Canceled  Postage  Stamps.  But  I  have 
implicit  faith  in  the  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Suspicion  and 
Heresy.  He  is  a  man  with  pronounced  symptoms  of  dys 
pepsia,  and  he  can  tell  sedition  by  a  mere  glance  at  the 
wrapper." 

"  How  influential  a  paper  is  this  Monthly  Mess?  "  said 
the  Caliph. 

"  It  started  with  a  circulation  of  875,  your  Majesty," 
replied  the  Minister- General  of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes. 
"  We  have  been  suppressing  it  for  two  consecutive  months, 
and  its  circulation  is  now  15,000.  This  shows  that  there  is 
no  time  to  be  lost." 

The  Caliph  reached  behind  the  silken  cushions  at  the 
back  of  the  divan  and  drew  forth  a  newspaper  with  one 
hand  while  he  shaded  his  eyes  with  the  other.  It  was 
printed  in  seven  colors,  and  the  name  of  the  publication 
was  three-fourths  of  the  way  down  the  page. 

"  I  have  been  looking  into  this  paper  from  time  to  time, 
Burru-el-Hassan,"  he  said,  "  and  I  have  come  across  a 
good  many  things  which  would  displease  me  exceedingly 
if  I  had  the  necessary  symptoms  of  indigestion.  Why  not 
suppress  it,  too?  " 

The  Minister  of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes  went  deadly 
pale. 

"Impossible,  Sire,"  he  stammered.  "Two  million  peo 
ple  read  it  every  day." 

"  So  that  you  fail  to  regard  it  as  a  public  menace?  " 

The  Minister  held  up  his  arms  in  entreaty. 

"  Majesty,  you  will  not  take  away  from  two  million  peo- 


22  SINBAD 

pie  the  daily  Adventures  of  Dhingbat,  of  Kerisi  Kat,  and 
of  Abu  Kaab'  Eblis,  and  the  column  of  Unction  for  the 
Heartbroken?  Consider  the  consequences.  It's  revolu 
tion.  And  besides,  deign  to  glance  through  the  pages. 
Everywhere  you  see  charming  little  pictures  of  the  banner 
of  the  Prophet  and  heartening  little  mottoes  like  '  Meso 
potamia  First '  and  l  All  for  Mesopotamia/  Think  again, 
oh  Considerate  One." 

"  The  banners  and  the  mottoes  are  delightful,"  said  the 
Caliph,  "  and  the  exhortations  of  loyalty  addressed  to  the 
public  are  no  less  pleasing.  Give  ear,  Sinbad:  '  Meso 
potamia  will  hold  no  price  too  high  for  victory  in  the  life- 
and-death  struggle  we  are  now  waging  in  conjunction  with 
cowardly  Britain  and  the  deluded  French  against  the  un 
conquerable  hosts  of  Madagascar.'  Or  this,  Sinbad:  'Two 
billion  sequins  for  wooden  ships  is  not  enough.  We  must 
be  prepared  to  spend  at  least  five  billions  on  wooden  bot 
toms  that  will  last  the  Madagascar  submarines  just  about 
a  month  if  indeed  they  do  not  turn  turtle  before  leaving 
port.'  Or  this:  '  Without  fear  or  hesitation,  with  clenched 
teeth  and  resolute  heart,  we  must  plunge  forward  into  the 
bottomless  abyss.'  It's  a  fine,  loyal  sheet,  Sinbad.  When 
you  have  read  this  newspaper  carefully,  you  will  understand 
why  it  is  necessary  to  exclude  that  other  thing,  the  Monthly 
Mess,  from  the  mails." 

The  Minister  of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes  heaved  a  great 
sigh  of  relief,  and  his  countenance  was  like  the  sun  when 
it  sets  behind  the  Euphrates  desert. 

"  I  am  happy  to  have  convinced  your  Majesty,"  he  said. 
"As  for  this  essentially  harmless  organ  of  public  opinion, 


THE  SUPPRESSED  DESIRE  23 

I  fail  to  understand  how  the  Chief  Private  Scribe  of  the 
Antechamber  permitted  a  copy  to  reach  your  august  hands 
without  deleting  the  few  infelicities  that  will  creep  into  the 
bes*.-regulated  newspaper." 

The  Caliph  shook  his  head. 

"  I  don't  get  it  from  the  Chief  Scribe,"  he  said.  "  He 
supplies  me  only  with  clippings  from  the  dignified  news 
papers  of  Mesopotamia.  I  find  them  difficult  reading  in 
the  subdued  light  of  this  chamber.  The  Chief  Scribe  re 
tains  this  particular  publication  for  his  own  use  when  he 
goes  out  for  his  midday  meal.  But  I  have  a  private  ar 
rangement  with  his  office  boy." 

He  thought  a  moment  and  sighed. 

"  I  suppose  I  must  let  you  have  your  way,  Burru-el- 
Hassan,"  he  said.  "  But  in  the  name  of  Allah,  I  implore 
you  to  suppress  the  Monthly  Mess  utterly  before  it  at 
tains  a  circulation  of  a  million  and  adds  a  department  for 
the  Heartbroken." 

But  at  this  instant  a  stranger  projected  himself  into  the 
Presence  and  cried  aloud:  "  Justice,  Sire.  Mercy,  oh, 
Compassionate!  " 

"  What  is  your  need,  son?  "  said  the  Caliph. 

"  Kindly  One,"  uttered  the  stranger,  "  I  am  the  editor 
of  the  Bagdad  Hysterical  Quarterly.  I  began  a  year  ago 
with  a  circulation  of  250  and  a  policy  of  consistent  dis 
loyalty.  But  I  have  escaped  the  attention  of  the  Minister 
of  Posts  and  Pillar  Boxes,  and  to-day  my  circulation  is 
234.  Merciful  One,  suppress  me!  " 

"  To  what  good?  "  asked  the  Caliph. 

"  My  subscriptions  are  paid  up  in  advance,"  cried  the 


24  SINBAD 

suppliant.  "  If  I  can  save  white  paper  and  composition 
on  only  two  numbers,  I  may  come  out  even.  And  I  need  a 
vacation." 

He  sobbed  violently. 

"  Have  your  wish,  son,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  See  to  it, 
Burru-el-Hassan." 


STORY  OF  THE  TRUE  BELIEVERS 

ABOUT  this  time  there  came  to  Bagdad  the  whirling 
dervish  Bhilee-el-Sunnadieh,  to  save  the  people  from 
destruction.  It  was  his  solemn  belief  that  more  than  the 
inhabitants  of  any  other  city  in  Mesopotamia  the  people  of 
Bagdad  are  given  over  to  worldly  wisdom.  He  called  them 
sophisticated,  fat  of  heart,  smug  with  content,  and  in  every 
other  way  the  servitors  of  the  Spirit  that  denies,  which  is 
Sheitan. 

The  dervish  Sunnadieh  never  wearied  of  making  this 
point.  He  did  it  on  his  feet,  on  his  hands,  on  the  flying 
trapeze,  in  the  standing  broad  jump,  and  with  the  half-nelt 
son.  Whether  he  addressed  you  from  the  top  of  the  reading, 
desk  or  from  between  the  legs  of  the  grand  piano  the  bur, 
den  of  his  complaint  was  always  the  same:  The  people 
of  Bagdad  will  not  believe  and  are  bound  straight  for  hell, 
where  they  belong. 

Naturally  I  determined  to  canvass  public  opinion  on  the 
subject.  With  that  end  in  view  I  first  approached  my  good 
friend  Hussein  the  Sanitary  Barber,  whom  I  found  in  the 
open  space  behind  his  booth  digging  up  the  soil  for  pota 
toes.  Him  I  addressed,  saying,  «  Oh,  Hussein,  son  of  AH, 
I  entreat  thee,  refrain  from  your  labors  in  behalf  of  the  na 
tion's  food  supply  long  enough  to  bestow  upon  me  a  shave 

25 


26  SINBAD 

and  facial  massage."  And  as  I  reclined  in  the  chair  watch 
ing  the  play  of  his  razor  on  the  strop  I  said,  "  Is  it  true,  oh 
Hussein,  that  the  people  of  this  city  are  set  in  their  opinions 
and  convinced  that  they  know  it  all?  " 

For  some  time  he  studied  the  tip  of  his  nose  in  the  mirror 
after  the  fashion  of  his  kind.  Then  he  laughed. 

"  Sinbad,"  he  said,  "  some  child  of  Eblis  has  been  pulling 
thy  leg.  In  the  words  of  our  immortal  mufti,  Abu  Mutal- 
lib,  there  is  nothing  to  it.  The  people  of  Bagdad  will 
believe  anything." 

Having  paused  to  reflect,  he  resumed  his  discourse  at 
break-neck  speed,  yea,  like  the  wild  ass  of  Irak  scenting 
the  cool  of  the  date  trees  at  nightfall. 

"They  believe  what  they  read;  they  believe  what  they 
hear,  even  to  the  third  and  the  fourth  remove.  They 
believe  Wullahim-ah-Hoirst.  They  believe  the  Fakirs  of 
the  Street  of  the  Golden  Wall  where  they  go  to  exchange 
their  good  sequins  and  jewels  for  Insulated  Copper  pre 
ferred.  They  believe  the  rescripts  and  decrees  of  the 
Aintar-Buru." 

"  And  who  would  the  last-named  be?  "  I  asked. 

He  explained  that  the  Aintar-Buru  is  a  guild  which 
owns  and  controls  the  business  of  camel  transport  within 
Bagdad,  and  upon  which  the  inhabitants  entirely  depend 
for  conveyance  to  and  from  their  work  in  the  bazaars.  By 
dint  of  much  thought  and  labor  the  Aintar-Buru  has  suc 
ceeded  in  increasing  the  average  camel  load  from  four 
passengers  to  twenty-six,  leaving  room  enough  on  the  flanks 
of  the  patient  beasts — that  is,  the  camels — for  the  posting 
of  proclamations  in  large  type,  saying,  "  Our  hearts  go  out 


THE  TRUE  BELIEVERS  27 

to  our  passengers.  Write  to  us  and  you  shall  be  com 
forted,  in  the  name  of  Allah!  "  And  the  people  of  Bag 
dad  believe  this.  And  when  the  camel  trains  break  down 
utterly,  and  the  loading  bridges  are  crowded  to  suffocation, 
and  the  ticket-selling  slaves  of  the  Aintar-Buru,  seated  in 
their  kiosks,  say  to  the  populace,  "  Come  ye  in,  come  ye 
in,  there  is  plenty  of  room,"  the  people  believe  them, 
too. 

Much  more  Hussein  told  me  concerning  the  child-like 
faith  of  the  Bagdadanese.  They  believe  in  the  efficacy 
of  the  laws.  When  a  law  is  enacted  by  the  Council  pro 
hibiting  the  carrying  of  deadly  weapons  by  the  common 
people  they  believe  that  the  homicide  rate  the  following 
morning  has  been  reduced  by  nine-tenths;  and  when  the 
law  is  declared  to  have  failed  they  believe  it  just  as  easily. 
So  great  is  their  belief  in  the  laws  that,  once  a  law  is  pro 
claimed,  they  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  enforce  it.  And 
especially  do  they  believe  that  for  any  betterment  in  their 
health,  or  their  government,  or  their  social  conditions,  all 
that  is  required  is  to  set  apart  a  Day  for  the  purpose.  Thus 
Hussein  mentioned: 

Open-Window  Day. 

Love-Your-Mother  Day. 

Salute-the-Flag  Day. 

Babies'  Day. 

Eat-an-Apple  Day. 

Get-Acquainted-With-Your-Neighbor  Day. 

Visit-the-Aquarium  Day,  etc. 

Hussein  pointed  out  that  while  nobody  has  ever  been 
observed  to  perform  any  of  these  appointed  ceremonials 


28  SINBAD 

on  the  appointed  day,  everybody  believes  that  everybody 
else  is  doing  it. 

I  was  ruminating  on  the  many  strange  things  which  the 
Sanitary  Barber  had  told  me  when  all  at  once  he  seized 
a  crystal  bowl  of  liquid  perfume  and  made  as  if  he  would 
deluge  my  head  and  face  with  it  after  the  manner  of  his 
tribe.  He  received  my  protest  with  ill-grace,  as  is  custo 
mary,  whereupon,  to  appease  him,  I  said,  "  Tell  me  this, 
oh  Hussein,  do  the  people  of  Bagdad  find  it  difficult  to 
believe  so  many  things  at  the  same  time?  " 

His  face  brightened,  like  the  sheen  of  the  palm  leaf 
under  the  new  moon. 

"  Quite  the  contrary,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  The  advantage 
of  having  numerous  and  contradictory  things  to  believe  in 
is  that  everybody  can  pick  out  the  particular  thing  to 
which  he  may  pin  his  faith.  Take,  for  instance,  the  ques 
tion  of  How  to  Succeed,  in  which  the  people  of  Bagdad 
are  more  interested  than  in  anything  else.  For  that  pur 
pose  they  read  the  inspirational  Magh-Azins." 

"  I  do  not  know  them,"  I  said. 

He  explained  that  a  Magh-Azin  is  a  publication  issued 
every  new  moon  and  containing  chapters  on  how  to  suc 
ceed  in  life  by  eminent  men  who  have  succeeded.  If  you 
read  these  chapters  one  after  the  other  you  find  that  the 
secret  of  success  is  (i)  to  go  to  college,  (2)  to  start  in  as 
a  foundry  apprentice,  (3)  to  determine  beforehand  what 
you  want  to  do,  (4)  to  look  about  and  experiment  before 
settling  down,  (5)  to  go  East  to  Baluchistan  and  grow 
up  with  the  country,  (6)  to  stay  in  Bagdad,  where  the 


THE  TRUE  BELIEVERS  29 

opportunities  are  richest,  (7)  not  to  marry  until  one  has 
a  competence,  (8)  to  find  the  right  woman  who  will  share 
your  ambitions  and  struggles  with  you,  (9)  to  study  Span 
ish  and  French,  (10)  to  go  in  for  Occasional  Training. 

The  latter  was  a  term  which  I  did  not  comprehend.    But 
of  that  later. 


STORY  OF  FATIMA  AND  THE  BOND- 
SALESMAN 

THE  authenticity  of  the  following  narrative  I  can  per 
sonally  vouch  for.  It  was  imparted  to  me  under  the 
seal  of  strictest  confidence  by  the  Grand  Vizier,  by  the  head 
scribe  of  the  Bureau  of  Polar  Exploration,  by  the  Keeper 
of  the  Tennis  Courts,  by  the  chief  mufti  of  the  Executive 
Committee  of  the  National  Mesopotamian  Association  for; 
the  Capture  and  Consolidation  of  Equal  Rights  for  Women 
(familiarly  known  as  the  E.  C.  N.  M.  A.  C.  C.  E.  R.  W.), 
and  by  the  head  barber  at  the  caravanserai  where  I  lodge. 

It  would  appear  then  that  on  a  certain  day  the  Com 
mander  of  the  Faithful,  musing  on  the  probable  outcome 
of  the  Two  Billion  Defense  Loan,  sent  for  Ali  ben  Hassan, 
his  chief  cosmetician  and  professor  of  modern  languages, 
and  caused  himself  to  be  disguised  as  an  itinerant  mer 
chant's  clerk,  even  to  the  curl  of  the  beard  and  the  slant 
of  the  eyebrows.  Inserting  a  handful  of  cigars  into  the 
folds  of  his  turban  and  carrying  a  wallet  with  several  bonds 
of  the  denomination  of  100  sequins  and  upwards,  the  Caliph 
departed  from  Bagdad  and  betook  himself  to  the  village 
of  Hammidieh,  in  the  outskirts  whereof  he  accosted  the 
husbandman,  Yussuf  ben  Omar,  plowing  behind  a  team 
of  oxen. 

"  Peace  to  you  and  yours,  oh  Yussuf,"  said  the  Caliph. 
"  We  are  obviously  in  for  a  spell  of  warm  weather.  Attempt 

30 


FATIMA  AND  THE  BOND-SALESMAN    31 

one  of  these  cigars,  I  entreat  you,  and  put  the  rest  in  your 
girdle.     I  have  here  a  proposition — " 

"  I  have  met  you  before,"  said  Yussuf. 

"  It  may  be,"  said  the  Caliph. 

"  Four  years  ago,"  said  Yussuf,  "  you  sold  me  fourteen 
cubits  of  Moslem  Masterpieces  in  limp  leather  for  a  small 
payment  down." 

"  True,  oh  Yussuf,"  said  the  Caliph. 

"  Three  years  ago,"  said  Yussuf,  "  you  sold  my  wife 
Fatima  a  combination  rug  sweeper  and  music  box  on  the 
same  terms." 

"Allah  has  strengthened  your  recollection,"  said  the 
Caliph. 

"Last  year,"  said  Yussuf,  "you  sold  me  flood  insur 
ance." 

"  For  each  day  its  special  need,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  Now 
I  hold  in  my  hand — " 

"  I  know,"  said  Yussuf.  "  It  behooves  me  merely  to 
sign  my  name  at  the  foot  of  the  paper  and  to  make  7,000 
weekly  payments  thereafter." 

"  More  or  less,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  dependent  on  the 
amount." 

Yussuf  considered  for  a  brief  space. 

"  You  see  the  irrigation  ditch  that  bounds  my  millet 
field,"  he  said. 

"  It  is  a  noble  ditch,"  said  the  Caliph. 

"It  is  three  feet  wide  at  the  top,"  said  Yussuf.  "A 
man  might  easily  take  it  on  the  jump,  especially  with  a 
flying  start." 

"Assuredly,"  said  the  Caliph 


32  SINBAD 

"  I  grant  you  that  flying  start,"  said  Yussuf. 

The  Caliph's  hand  swept  back  to  where  his  scimitar 
should  have  been,  but  he  checked  himself. 

"  The  scroll  of  the  past  is  rolled  tight  and  sealed,  oh 
Yussuf,"  he  said.  "  This  is  altogether  a  different  affair." 

"  Now,  by  the  scalloped  eaves  of  the  Sacred  Bungalow 
of  Ararat,"  cried  the  farmer,  "  if  you  persist!  " 

The  other  unrolled  the  engrossed  and  illuminated  bond. 

"For  Caliph  and  Country,"  he  said  solemnly.  "The 
Successor  of  the  Prophet  is  at  war  with  Madagascar.  The 
men  he  has;  but  how,  oh  Yussuf,  shall  they  be  armed  and 
fed?  This  parchment  is  worth  100  sequins.  I  offer  it  to 
you  for  that  amount." 

Yussuf  stared. 

"  Never  before  this  have  you  offered  me  for  the  sum  of 
100  sequins  anything  worth  less  than  five  times  that 
amount,"  he  said.  "  Mayhap  you  have  been  listening  to 
the  whirling  dervish  Sunnadieh  and  got  religion." 

The  Caliph  pushed  his  advantage. 

"  Your  country  calls,  Yussuf  ben  Omar,"  he  said.  "  In 
this  war  against  Madagascar  some  make  offer  of  their  lives; 
the  others  must  give  of  their  means.  It  is  a  national 
service." 

"  Have  I  not  done  enough?  "  said  Yussuf.  "  The  tax- 
gatherer  is  ever  at  my  elbow.  Fertilizer  has  gone  up  200 
per  cent.  Asses  and  mules  have  gone  up  60  per  cent.  Hired 
men  are  not  to  be  had.  What  more  does  the  country 
want?  " 

"  But  as  a  business  proposition,  Yussuf,"  said  the  Caliph. 
"A  gilt-edged  investment;  3^  per  cent,  for  thirty  years 


FATIMA  AND  THE  BOND-SALESMAN     33 

backed  by  the  credit  of  Mesopotamia  and  tax-exempt;  the 
greatest  going  concern  in  the  two  hemispheres;  assets  over 
100,000,000,000  sequins  over  liabilities,  and  only  the  sur 
face  of  the  property  scratched." 

The  farmer  rubbed  his  chin. 

"  You  say  there  is  no  risk?  " 

"  I  swear  it  by  both  shores  of  the  Euphrates,"  said  the 
Caliph. 

"  Bah,"  said  Yussuf.  "  Then  what  kind  of  national  serv 
ice  do  you  call  this?  While  other  men  are  taking  the  peril 
of  life  and  limb,  you  would  have  me  serve  my  Caliph  by 
drawing  3^2  per  cent,  on  a  gilt-edged  security.  It  is  a 
safe  patriotism." 

Here  the  Caliph  lost  his  temper. 

"  Now  Eblis  take  me,  but  it  is  not  so  safe  as  that!  Hold 
tight  your  purse-strings,  old  curmudgeon,  and  you'll  have 
the  hordes  of  Madagascar  sweeping  over  your  millet  fields 
before  the  year  is  over  and  burning  the  roof  over  your  head. 
It  is  a  toss-up  as  it  is." 

"  Oh,"  said  Yussuf,  "  then  it  is  taking  a  chance?  " 

"  Unquestionably." 

"Like  the  Moslem  Masterpieces  and  the  carpet 
sweeper?  " 

"  More  or  less." 

"In  that  case — "  said  Yussuf,  but  at  this  moment  his 
wife,  Fatima,  came  walking  across  the  fields  towards  her 
husband.  Seeing  the  stranger,  she  dropped  the  veil  over  her 
face. 

"Lift  your  veil,  Fatima;  it  is  only  an  agent,"  said 
Yussufj 


34  SINBAD 

She  came  up  to  them. 

"  Father  of  my  children,"  she  said,  "  what  would  the 
young  man?  " 

"  He  would  sell  us  a  loo-sequin  Defense  Bond,"  said 
Yussuf. 

The  Caliph  intervened. 

"  I  was  telling  your  husband,  oh  woman  among  ten 
thousand,  that  in  the  present  emergency  it  is  simple  duty 
to  give  of  your  means  to  the  Government,  seeing  that  others 
stand  ready  to  give  their  lives — " 

Fatima's  eyes  grew  dim  and  she  turned  away.  Yus- 
suf's  hand  came  down  heavy  on  the  Caliph's  shoulder. 

"  Incomparable  Idiot,"  he  whispered,  "  our  eldest  son, 
Malek,  has  enlisted  with  the  spearmen;  Selim,  our  second, 
has  joined  the  Sub-Surface  Camel  Squadron,  and  now  the 
youngest  is  clamoring  to  go." 

"  Allah  take  pity  on  my  ill-adjusted  faculties,"  said  the 
Caliph.  "  How  was  a  man  to  know?  "  He  bent  to  the 
ground  and  retreated. 

"Stay,"  said  Fatima,  and  then  to  her  husband:  "The 
hens,  oh  Glory  of  my  Household,  are  laying  well.  The 
brown  calf  is  almost  ready  for  the  slaughterer.  There  is 
a  bit  of  money  coming  in  from  the  wool-merchant.  Let 
us  take  this  one  with  the  green  and  purple  lettering." 

"  Can  we  afford  it,  Fatima?  "  said  Yussuf. 

"  I  have  just  been  reading  up  a  new  way  of  utilizing 
pomegranate  seeds  in  a  bulletin  of  the  Mesopotamian  Moth 
ers'  Association,"  said  Fatima.  "We  will  manage,  Chief 
Jewel  of  my  Diadem," 


FATIMA  AND  THE  BOND-SALESMAN    35 

"One  hundred  sequins?"  said  Yussuf. 

"  Five  hundred,"  said  Fatima,  and  the  Crown  of  her 
Existence,  breathing  hard,  signed. 

"Admirable  Mother,"  said  the  Caliph.  "Your  country 
thanks  you." 

"  It  will  look  lovely  in  a  gold  frame  in  the  parlor,"  said 
Fatima. 


STORY  OF  THE  ENTANGLED  LEGISLATOR 

THE  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  accompanied  by 
his  sword-bearer,  Mesrour,  and  by  the  Principal 
Censor,  was  making  his  nightly  round  among  the  home 
gardens  in  the  environs  of  the  capital.  There  suddenly  fell 
upon  the  royal  ears  the  sound  of  a  man's  lamentations  min 
gled  with  gentle  words  of  comfort  from  a  woman's  lips. 
By  the  light  of  Mesrour's  lantern  they  saw  that  the  accents 
of  grief  emanated  from  an  individual  of  middle  age,  who 
leaned  his  head  against  the  wall  of  a  porch  with  eyes 
half-closed,  pausing  occasionally  to  glance  at  an  engrossed 
parchment  in  his  right  hand,  the  perusal  of  which  only 
seemed  to  intensify  his  sorrow.  By  his  side  sat  a  woman, 
his  wife,  and  fondled  his  right  hand  and  wiped  the  perspira 
tion  from  his  forehead  with  the  folds  of  her  long  veil. 

"  By  the  beard  of  the  Collector  of  Internal  Revenue  for 
the  Third  District,"  cried  the  Caliph,  "  but  this  is  a  woeful 
sight,"  and  with  characteristic  impulsiveness  he  snatched 
from  the  hand  of  the  Principal  Censor  the  thermos  bottle 
which  was  the  sign  of  his  office  (so  that  as  occasion  re 
quired  the  Principal  Censor  might  blow  hot  or  cold)  and 
held  it  to  the  sufferer's  lips.  And  when  the  latter  had 
drunk,  "  Tell  me,  oh  stranger,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  the  cause 
of  your  unmitigated  nocturnal  woe." 

The  stranger  handed  the  parchment  to  the  Caliph. 
"  Read,"  he  said,  and  relapsed  with  his  brow  against  the 

36 


THE  ENTANGLED  LEGISLATOR      37 

porch  steps.  Bidding  Mesrour  hold  his  lantern  aloft,  the 
Caliph  read  aloud: 

"  An  Act  for  the  Regulation  and  Conservation  of  the 
National  Food  Supply: 

"  Section  i.  The  sum  of  2,500,000  sequins  is  hereby 
appropriated  for  the  erection  of  a  marble  post  office  in  the 
Fourteenth  Electoral  District  of  Bagdad. 

"  Section  2.  All  appropriations  for  the  deepening  of  the 
Tigris  channel  below  the  port  of  Basra  as  herein  provided 
shall  be  expended  only  under  the  supervision  of  the  Im 
perial  Engineering  Department. 

"  Section  3.  The  Act  of  1897  relating  to  pensions  for  the 
war  of  1456  is  hereby  amended  by  the  omission  of  the 
word  c  not '  wherever  it  occurs. 

"  Section  4.  Full  freedom  of  worship  is  hereby  reaffirmed 
for  all  natives  of  Mesopotamia. 

"  Section  5.  All  gold  coins  of  the  denomination  of  100 
sequins  and  upward  shall  hereafter  be  issued  only  from 
the  Central  Mint  at  Bagdad. 

"  Section  6.  A  minimum  length  of  two  and  a  half  cubits 
for  all  bed-linen  and  blankets  in  public  inns  in  towns  of 
vmore  than  30,000  population  is  hereby  established. 

"  Section  7.  Compulsory  Arabic  and  Hindu  shall  hence 
forth  be  required  for  all  entrance  examinations  to  the  Gov 
ernment  colleges." 

The  Caliph  looked  up  in  wonder. 

"  But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  an  act  for  the  regu 
lation  and  conservation  of  the  national  food  supply?  "  he 
said.  Whereat  the  stranger  raised  his  head,  said,  "  Ah," 
and  burst  into  uncontrollable  tears. 


38  SINBAD 

Thereupon  the  woman,  his  wife,  putting  her  arm  fondly 
about  her  husband's  shoulder  and  addressing  herself  to  the 
Caliph,  lifted  up  her  voice  and  said:  "  Know  ye,  strangers, 
that  this  my  husband  was  chosen  a  short  year  ago  to  the 
National  Council  of  Elders  from  the  Ninth  Euphrates  Dis 
trict,  and  that  he  entered  the  legislative  halls  of  the  capital 
with  the  firm  resolve  to  give  all  that  is  best  in  him  to  the 
business  of  framing  the  laws  of  his  country.  To  that  end 
he  said  farewell  to  his  family  save  me,  his  wife,  abandoned 
his  outdoor  pastimes,  and  purchased  a  set  of  the  Encyclo 
pedia  Babylonica  in  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  volumes 
on  the  instalment  plan.  Having  prepared  himself  diligently 
for  the  task,  he  arose  in  the  Legislative  Hall  a  fortnight 
ago,  while  the  Bill  for  the  Regulation  of  Electric 
Franchises  was  under  consideration,  and  started  to  ad 
dress  the  House  on  the  use  of  electric  current  in  domestic 
industry." 

Furtively  she  brought  the  corner  of  her  veil  to  her  eyes, 
and  the  Caliph's  hand  went  out  to  her  in  instinctive  sym 
pathy. 

"  My  dear  madam,"  said  the  Caliph. 

"  It  is  nothing,"  she  replied.  "  My  husband  had  hardly 
begun  to  dilate  on  the  advantages  of  the  patent  electric  iron 
in  the  home  when  the  Chief  Cadi  of  the  House  brought 
down  his  gavel  with  a  crash  and  declared  that  the  gentle 
man  from  the  Euphrates  was  not  addressing  himself  to  the 
subject  in  hand. 

" '  We  are  discussing  the  Bill  for  Electric  Franchises/ 
said  my  husband. 

" f  True/  said  the  Chief  Cadi,  '  but  we  now  have  under 


THE  ENTANGLED  LEGISLATOR      39 

consideration  Section  12,  providing  for  a  national  census 
of  oleomargarine  factories.' 

" '  Will  I  be  in  order  under  the  next  section?  '  asked  my 
husband. 

" '  No,'  said  the  Chief  Cadi,  '  that  deals  exclusively  with 
hoof- and- mouth  disease  in  Baluchistan.' 

"'Section  37,  then,'  said  my  husband. 

" '  By  consulting  his  printed  copy  of  the  bill/  said  the 
Chief  Cadi  drily,  { the  gentleman  will  discover  that  Sec 
tion  37  relates  to  import  duties  on  ostrich  eggs,  mediaeval 
sculpture,  and  taffeta.' 

"  l  In  that  case/  cried  my  husband  in  desperation,  '  when 
will  the  opportunity  arise  to  discuss  electric  franchises?  ' 

" 1 1  cannot  say/  replied  the  Chief  Cadi,  '  unless  it  comes 
up  under  the  Bill  for  the  Regulation  of  the  Local  Ju 
diciary.' 

"  From  that  time,"  the  woman  went  on,  as  she  held  the 
thermos  bottle  to  her  husband's  lips,  "  his  splendid  dreams 
of  service  to  his  country  faded.  He  did  not  give  in  readily. 
One  flash  of  hope  there  came.  My  husband  was  pledged 
to  his  constituents  to  secure  legislation  for  the  erection  of 
a  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  in  his  district.  He  came  home  one 
night  from  the  House  all  aglow.  1 1  have  done  it,  Fatima/ 
he  cried.  '  You  know  the  Forest  Reserve  Bill?  Well,  Sec 
tion  8  in  the  original  form  provided,  by  pure  accident,  for 
the  organization  of  a  corps  of  5,000  men  for  the  purpose 
of  fighting  forest  fires,  and  I  have  succeeded  in  having  my 
Museum  Bill  substituted.'  That  night  he  could  not  sleep 
for  happiness.  Alas!  Next  day  the  House  adopted  an 
amendment  to  his  amendment,  providing  for  the  equipment 


40  SINBAD 

and  dispatch  of  a  scientific  expedition  to  the  North  Pole." 

"  And  since  then  he  has  been  like  this?  "  asked  the 
Caliph. 

She  nodded  miserably. 

"  Now  by  the  sacred  turban  of  Ispahan/'  cried  Mes- 
rour,  "  it  were  best,  oh  Majesty,  to  put  this  poor  fool  out 
of  his  misery  once  for  all."  The  heavy  scimitar  flashed 
upward  and  the  woman  shrieked;  but  the  unhappy  legis 
lator  looked  up  and  said  wearily:  "Not  that  it  makes  any 
difference  to  me,  but  by  what  authority  would  you  take  my 
life,  efficient  stranger?  " 

"  Section  13  of  the  Deep  Sea  Fisheries  Act,"  said  Mes- 
rour  grimly. 

"  Let  be,  Mesrour,"  said  the  Caliph;  "  the  man  has  spent 
himself  for  his  country." 


STORY  OF  THE  BEWILDERED  BRIDEGROOM 

NOW  that  the  Princess  Ayesha  is  happily  wedded  and 
on  her  way  to  Turkestan,  there  can  be  no  harm  in 
my  betraying  the  secret  that  only  by  the  narrowest  kind 
of  a  squeak  was  catastrophe  averted  almost  at  the  last 
moment. 

In  the  dusk  of  evening  on  the  day  before  the  nuptials 
I  was  passing  through  the  court  which  separates  the  offices 
of  the  Principal  Censor  from  the  Bureau  of  Irrigation  and 
Fine  Arts  when  I  discerned  the  figure  of  a  man  seated  in  an 
attitude  of  utter  dejection  on  the  fountain's  edge.  His 
chin  was  in  the  palm  of  his  right  hand,  and  with  his  foot 
he  was  demonstrating  in  the  gravel  of  the  courtyard  the 
never-to-be-forgotten  truth  that  the  sum  of  two  sides  in  any 
triangle  is  greater  than  the  third  side. 

Coming  closer,  I  saw  that  it  was  the  young  Khan  of 
Turkestan,  husband-to-be  of  the  Princess  Ayesha. 

"  Highness,"  I  exclaimed,  "  you  here  and  at  this  hour?  " 

He  looked  at  me  with  lack-luster  eyes,  and  in  a  voice 
that  went  straight  to  the  heart,  "  Is  it  you,  Sinbad?  "  he 
said.  "  Well,  it's  all  off,  old  man." 

"Now,  by  the  beard  of  the  General  Manager  of  the 
Bagdad  Oil  Subsidiaries,  you  are  jesting,  Highness,"  I  cried. 

He  shook  his  head,  and  with  the  toe  of  his  left  sandal 
proved  beyond  cavil  that  in  any  circle  the  circumference 

4* 


42  SINBAD 

is  equal  to  the  diameter  multiplied  by  3.14159.  Then  sud 
denly,  "Tell  me  this,  Sinbad,"  he  said;  "  of  how  many 
minds  may  any  woman  at  any  given  moment  be,  simul 
taneously?  " 

"  Transparency,"  I  said,  "  by  the  latest  census  figures 
there  are  in  Mesopotamia  11,345,234  women  between  the 
ages  of  six  and  eighty-four.  But  to-morrow's  nuptials — ?  " 

Thereupon  he  told  me. 

It  would  seem  that  only  an  hour  before,  the  young 
Khan,  with  his  bride,  her  royal  father,  and  the  Chief  Mul 
lah,  were  met  to  decide  on  the  final  details  of  the  marriage 
contract  and  the  wording  of  the  oath.  On  his  own  initia 
tive  the  Mullah  had  omitted  "  obey."  All  that  we  can  ask 
of  young  people  nowadays,  he  said,  is  that  they  shall  love 
and  cherish — 

"  No,"  said  the  Princess  Ayesha,  "  love  and  respect.  I 
don't  want  to  be  cherished,  and  I  won't  condescend  to 
cherish.  We  can  very  well  take  care  of  ourselves.  Hassan 
and  I  are  to  be  comrades  and  friends." 

"  And  I  consented  readily,  Sinbad,"  said  the  young  Khan, 
"  for,  looking  at  Ayesha,  even  beneath  her  veil,  there  was 
naught  but  her  that  mattered." 

"True,"  I  said.  "'A  book  of  verses  underneath  the 
bough,  a  crust  of  bread,  and  Thou  beside  me  in  the  wilder 
ness.'  " 

"  What's  that  from?  "  asked  the  Khan. 

"  Omar  Khayyam,  your  Highness,  one  of  your  eminent 
poets  of  Central  Asia." 

"  Never  heard  of  him,"  he  said.  "  But  stay.  I  recall 
now  some  such  verses  chanted  by  a  young  woman  from 


BEWILDERED  BRIDEGROOM    43 

America  who  visited  Turkestan  a  few  years  ago.  She  went 
about  with  a  kodak  and  nearly  drove  the  Superintendent 
of  the  Woman's  Palace  insane.  I  was  saying:  I  agreed 
to  Ayesha's  stipulation,  and  then,  moved  by  I  know  not 
what  excess  of  tenderness,  of  which  even  now  I  am  not 
ashamed,  'Write  it  down  in  the  contract,  oh  Mullah,'  I 
said,  'that,  contrary  to  the  immemorial  practice  of  the 
princely  house  of  Turkestan,  never,  after  Ayesha  crosses 
the  threshold  of  my  palace  as  my  wife,  shall  another  woman 
enter  to  share  or  dispute  with  her  the  respect  and—' " 

"'Please,  please,  no  sentiment,  Hassan  dear,'  laughed 
Ayesha.  f  It  is  very  nice  of  you,  to  be  sure,  but  after  all 
we  know  the  male  of  the  species  is  as  yet  imperfectly  monog 
amous,  and  writing  it  down  in  the  contract  would  not  make 
it  otherwise.' 

"  That  hurt,  Sinbad.  The  Caliph,  her  father,  blushed, 
and  the  Chief  Mullah  had  a  bad  fit  of  coughing.  But  I 
cared  for  Ayesha,  and  I  wanted  to  do  the  right  thing. 
1  Very  well,'  I  said,  <  we  will  be  practical.  Write,  oh  Mul 
lah,  that  whatsoever  privileges  I  may  hereafter  arrogate  to 
myself,  these  rights  I  concede  to  Ayesha.  There  shall  be 
no  double  standards  in  Turkestan.' 

"'Now  you  are  insulting,'  said  Ayesha;  'I  won't  stay 
here  another  minute.' 

" '  But  by  the  Twenty-four  Books  of  the  Shah  Nameh,' 
I  cried,  '  what  have  I  done,  Ayesha?  '  Only  she  would  not 
answer. 

"  '  Son,  beg  her  pardon,'  whispered  the  Caliph  behind  his 
hand. 

"  '  But—' 


44  SINBAD 

"  The  Chief  Mullah  bent  over  me.  <  Beg  her  pardon,  you 
idiot,  or  you're  done  for,'  he  hissed. 

" '  Ayesha,'  I  said,  'return;  I  beg  your  pardon.' 

"  She  came  back  and  sat  down  at  a  little  distance.  '  The 
least  I  can  expect  is  that  you  consider  my  feelings,'  she 
said.  '  Let  us  proceed.'  " 

Well,  when  they  came  to  Clause  XII,  Subdivision  C,  of 
the  marriage  contract,  enumerating  the  bridegroom's  gifts, 
the  young  Khan  remarked  on  the  famous  royal  emeralds 
of  Turkestan.  "  They  will  match  Ayesha's  eyes,"  said  he. 

"  How  do  you  know  the  color  of  my  eyes?  "  said  Ayesha. 
t{  You  have  never  seen  me  unveiled." 

"  They  all  three  stared  at  me,  Sinbad,  and  I  could  not 
but  confess  the  truth.  1 1  have  not  seen  your  living  fea 
tures,  Ayesha,'  I  said.  '  But  your  photograph — ' 

"  '  Where?  '  she  asked. 

" '  In  the  New  York  Sunday  Supplement,'  I  said.  «  That 
American  woman  with  the  kodak.  She  told  me  that  on 
her  way  to  Turkestan  she  had  visited  Bagdad.  It  came 
to  me  all  at  once  that  she  might  have  met  Ayesha.  I  sent 
a  special  ambassador  to  search  the  files  of  the  illustrated 
papers,  and  after  two  years  they  found  the  picture.' 

"  Ayesha  came  close  to  me  and  said  in  a  strange  voice, 
'  You  did  this  for  me,  Hassan?  '  But  I  remembered  what 
she  said  about  sentiment,  and  I  made  answer,  £  Naturally  I 
wished  to  know  what  the  mother  of  my  children  would  look 
like.'  She  stood  straight  up  and  said,  '  Hassan,  you  might 
at  least  be  a  gentleman,  even  if  you  don't  care  a  rap  for 
me,'  and  walked  out.  Why  was  I  ever  born,  Sinbad?  " 


BEWILDERED  BRIDEGROOM    45 

Now  the  chill  of  evening  had  descended  upon  the  court 
yard,  and  as  I  sat  on  the  cold  stone  of  the  fountain-rim 
in  my  light  Oriental  robes  and  racked  my  brains  for  words 
of  suitable  comfort,  I  sneezed  mightily  and  again  and  again; 
and  just  then  the  veiled  figure  of  a  woman  passed  across 
the  courtyard.  Ayesha  stopped  and  looked  back. 

"  Who  was  that?     You,  Sinbad?  "  she  said. 

I  was  inspired:  "Not  I,  Serenity. " 

She  turned  to  Hassan. 

"  How  long  have  you  had  this  cold?  " 

I  nudged  him  fiercely  and  he  understood. 

"  Since  yesterday,  Ayesha,"  he  said  humbly. 

"  Go  straight  to  your  room  and  gargle  with  bicarbonate 
of  soda,"  she  commanded. 

"As  you  say,  Ayesha,"  replied  the  young  Khan  and 
departed.  The  next  day  they  were  married. 


STORY  OF  THE  UNPLEASANT  TASK 

I    WASTED  no  time  in  preliminaries. 
"Majesty,"  I  said,  "  is  there  enthusiasm  among  the 
people  of  Mesopotamia  for  this  war  with  the  Empire  of 
Madagascar?  " 

The  Caliph  glanced  anxiously  at  the  curtains  through 
which  the  Principal  Censor  had  but  now  disappeared. 

"  Never  fear,  Illustrious,"  I  observed.  "  By  this  time  he 
is  busy  with  the  naval  reports,  eliminating  all  references 
to  the  equator." 

"  In  that  case,  Sinbad,"  he  said,  "  I  am  free  to  state 
that  there  is  no  overwhelming  enthusiasm  for  the  war.  And 
between  you  and  me,  I  am  neither  surprised  nor  disap 
pointed." 

"  Tis  a  pity,"  I  said. 

"  Not  at  all,"  he  countered  sharply.  "  Have  you  ever 
cleaned  out  the  furnace  or  chastised  one  of  the  children 
with  enthusiasm?  " 

"  Incomparable  One,"  I  cried,  "  surely  that  hand  has 
never  been  laid  upon  the  royal  offspring,  save  in  kind 
ness!  " 

He  shook  his  head  wearily. 

"  You  are  shocked,  Sinbad?  Well,  I  have  tried  the  other 
thing.  I  have  been  modern.  I  have  resorted  to  moral 
persuasion.  I  have  taken  them  singly  or  half  a  dozen  at 
a  time  and  reasoned  with  them.  Not  infrequently  I  have 

46 


THE  UNPLEASANT  TASK  47 

been  moved  to  tears  by  my  own  eloquence.  And  when  I 
departed,  leaving  them  alone  with  their  conscience,  they 
fell  to  shooting  marbles  on  the  ebony  table.  So  I  have 
fallen  back  on  the  older  methods  of  child  culture.  Twice 
a  month  I  go  through  the  list  with  the  strap  of  my  scimitar." 

"  A  comprehensive  undertaking,"  I  said,  half  to  myself. 

"  Not  if  you  go  at  it  in  a  businesslike  way,"  he  replied. 
"  At  first  I  made  use  of  a  modified  form  of  the  selective 
draft,  disciplining  them  from  the  age  of  seven  to  ten  on  the 
first  day  of  the  week,  from  ten  to  twelve  on  the  second, 
and  so  on  up  to  the  age  of  sixteen,  when  I  turn  them  over 
to  the  Minister  of  Secondary  Education.  Subsequently  I 
changed  to  the  alphabetical  arrangement,  Abdul  to  Enver 
on  Mondays,  Fatima  to  Hussein  on  Tuesdays,  etc.  I  go 
through  the  alphabet  conscientiously  every  fortnight,  but 
if  you  ask  me  with  enthusiasm — no." 

"  And  you  find  it  does  the  children  good?  "  I  said. 

"  We  were  speaking  of  the  war,"  he  said.  "  We  have 
gone  into  the  struggle  against  Madagascar  as  into  a  neces 
sary  bit  of  sanitation.  We  will  see  it  through,  but  why 
should  we  give  way  to  enthusiasm?  It  has  been  a  bitter 
business  for  those  who  went  in  before  us;  even  so  will  it 
be  for  us — a  costly  and  unavoidable  duty.  So  be  it.  For 
that  matter—" 

The  Principal  Censor  plunged  through  the  curtains  and 
tripped  over  a  footstool. 

"  Sire,"  he  cried,  "  there  is  a  traitor  in  our  midst.  The 
enemy  knows  that  one  of  our  transports  has  sailed." 

The  Caliph  frowned. 


48  SINBAD 

"  Have  you  guarded  the  secret  well?  "  he  demanded. 

"  Implacably,  oh  Indispensable  One,"  cried  the  Principal 
Censor.  "  With  the  exception  of  542  conductors  and  brake- 
men,  75  Pullman  porters,  678  baggage  smashers,  i,5oo-odd 
stevedores,  12,000  editors,  and  the  people  who  commute 
from  across  the  Tigris  between  six  and  nine  in  the  morn 
ing,  say,  40,000  citizens  at  most,  not  a  living  soul  has  had 
even  the  suspicion  of  what  the  Minister  of  War  was  about." 

The  Caliph  stroked  his  beard  thoughtfully. 

"Tell  me  this,  oh  Hajji  Ali,"  he  said,  addressing  him 
self  to  the  Principal  Censor,  "  is  there  even  one  among  my 
Ministers  and  servants  concerning  whose  activities  the  ene 
my  is  not  well  informed?  " 

"  Majesty,"  cried  the  Principal  Censor,  "  there  is  I.  Fre 
quently  I  am  myself  at  a  loss  as  to  just  what  I  am  about; 
how  much  less  the  enemy  who — " 

"  It  is  well,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  Go  back  to  thy  secrets, 
Hajji  Ali."  And  when  the  latter  was  gone,  "  Sinbad,"  he 
said,  "  has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  that  enthusiasm  is  usually 
fifty  years  or  more  after  the  event?  " 

"  Now  that  you  mention  it,  Sire,"  I  said. 

"  I  have  been  reading  of  late  in  the  history  of  the  peo 
ple  of  the  United  States,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  And  it  would 
plainly  appear  that  in  their  war  of  liberation  against  the 
Britons  the  armed  forces  of  the  United  States  were  prin 
cipally  engaged  in  running  away — so  the  learned  historian 
tells  me — while  the  civil  population  speculated  in  depre 
ciated  currency  and  jumped  land  titles.  Is  that  true?  " 

"  Majesty,"  I  said,  "  I  have  been  brought  up  partly  on 
Latin  and  Greek  and  partly  on  the  Gary  system,  and  I 


THE  UNPLEASANT  TASK  49 

know  nothing  of  the  history  of  the  country  in  which  I  was 
born." 

"  Later  I  read,"  he  continued,  "  that  in  the  great  Civil 
War  for  the  preservation  of  the  United  States  there  was 
much  discontent,  contractors'  graft,  sedition,  and  bounty- 
jumping.  Yet  the  Britons  were  beaten  in  1776  and  the 
nation  was  preserved  in  1861." 

"  Far  be  it  from  me  to  question  the  dates,"  I  said. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  said  the  Caliph,  "it  would  not 
be  a  difficult  matter  to  stimulate  enthusiasm  if  one  went  at 
it  the  right  way.  The  question  is  what  is  the  right  way. 
We  discussed  it  in  Cabinet  council,  where  two  contrary 
opinions  developed.  The  Grand  Vizier  and  the  Minister 
of  Horticulture  were  in  favor  of  scaring  the  people  to 
death.  The  Ministers  of  War  and  Statistics  insisted  upon 
a  policy  of  tickling  the  people  to  death.  We  effected  a 
compromise — the  Scarers  to  give  out  their  special  inter 
views  on  Mondays,  Wednesdays,  and  Fridays,  and  the 
Ticklers  on  Tuesdays,  Thursdays,  and  Saturdays.  We  re 
served  Sunday  for  modifying  and  explaining  all  statements 
issued  during  the  preceding  six  days." 

"  An  ingenious  scheme,"  I  said,  cautiously  steering  my 
way,  "  yet—" 

"  It  didn't  work  at  all,"  said  the  Caliph  sadly.  "  The 
Scarers  began  by  announcing  that  all  our  battleships  had 
a  heavy  list  to  starboard  and  that  there  was  a  scarcity  of 
ponchos  for  the  infantry.  Thereupon  the  Bagdad  Buzzer 
demanded  why  we  were  going  into  war  unprepared.  Next 
day  the  Ticklers  declared  that  the  enemy  was  in  the  throes 
of  defeat,  and  people  wrote  in  to  ask  what  was  the  use 


50  SINBAD 

of  our  coming  in  at  the  finish.    So  we  dropped  the  whole 
scheme." 

"  But,  Magnificent  One,  will  men  fight  without  enthu 
siasm?  "  I  said. 

"  I'd  rather  have  them  fight  with  determination,"  he  re 
plied.  "  You  see,  Sinbad,  this  isn't  golf  we  are  going  in 
for,  but  a  job;  a  trying,  disagreeable,  necessary  job,  like 
working  for  one's  living.  Besides  " — the  Caliph  smiled  into 
his  beard — "  you  are  a  married  man,  Sinbad?  " 

"  I  have  the  best  wife  in  the  world,"  I  said. 

"  Even  so.  And  on  occasion  you  have  been  dispatched 
after  midnight  to  investigate  suspicious  noises  in  the  cellar?  " 

"  It  has  occurred,"  I  said.    "  Kismet!  " 

"  And  you  have  crawled  downstairs  without  enthusiasm 
because  it  was  a  nuisance?  " 

"  Quite  so,  Majesty." 

"  Suppose,  now,  you  did  find  the  midnight  intruder.  You 
would  not  remain  indifferent?  " 

"  Indifferent  is  scarcely  the  word,"  I  said. 

"  Conceivably  you  might  develop  an  active  resentment 
against  the  man  who  compelled  you  to  get  out  of  bed  on 
a  cold  night,  especially  if  there  were  chairs  misplaced  in 
the  dark?  " 

I  bowed  before  his  subtlety. 

"  Incomparable  One,  you  have  said  it." 


STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  APAWAMIS 

SOMETHING  is  at  work  in  his  Majesty's  mind  which 
I  should  hesitate  to  put  into  words  even  if  the  Prin 
cipal  Censor  allowed  me  to;  so  momentous  are  its  impli 
cations,  not  only  for  Mesopotamia  and  her  allies,  but  for 
the  future  of  all  civilized  government. 

From  many  sources  I  have  recently  heard  that  his  Majesty 
is  not  giving  his  whole  heart  to  the  conduct  of  the  war. 
He  sits  absorbed  at  the  sessions  of  the  War  Cabinet  and 
rouses  himself  with  a  start  to  vote  automatically  "  yes  " 
or  "  no."  On  several  occasions  he  has  expressed  a  fervent 
desire  for  peace  almost  on  any  terms,  which  is  quite  out 
of  consonance  with  the  spirit  and  ideals  in  which  he  em 
barked  on  the  great  enterprise.  On  this  point  all  the  Cabi 
net  members  are  agreed,  the  Grand  Vizier,  the  Minister  of 
Fine  Arts  and  Irrigation,  the  Minister  of  Unfermented 
Foods,  the  Minister  of  High  and  Low  Finance,  and  the 
Under-Secretary  for  Classical  Education. 

I  asked  the  Grand  Vizier  when  he  first  noticed  the  change 
in  his  Majesty's  sentiments,  and  the  Grand  Vizier  said 
about  three  weeks  ago,  or,  to  be  precise,  the  day  after  the 
arrival  of  his  Majesty's  first  set  of  golf  sticks,  ordered  by 
wireless  from  London  and  conveyed  to  Basra  from  Suez 
by  the  fastest  destroyer  in  the  Mesopotamian  navy  and 

51 


5*  SINBAD 

thence  up  the  Tigris  by  hydroplane.  The  very  next  day 
an  important  meeting  of  the  War  Cabinet  had  been  called 
to  discuss  (i)  an  embargo  on  figs  and  dates,  and  (2)  the 
rapid  fall  in  the  value  of  the  Madagascar  mark,  which 
latter  the  Minister  of  High  and  Low  Finance  described  as 
an  event  of  the  utmost  significance.  But  the  Caliph  ad 
journed  the  meeting  to  the  following  day,  "  for  reasons  per 
haps  best  known  to  yourself,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Grand  Vizier, 
looking  me  straight  in  the  eye. 

I  made  no  attempt  at  evasion  and  concealment.  That 
day  I  had  escorted  the  Caliph  to  the  links,  which  had  been 
begun  and  completed  within  ten  days  by  detailing  to  the 
task  two  brigades  of  the  Royal  Engineers  and  a  division 
of  the  Home  Defense  League.  There  was  a  show  of  criti 
cism  in  the  Opposition  press,  but  it  was  quickly  suppressed 
by  the  Principal  Censor,  who  learned  the  game  at  St.  An 
drew's.  The  Principal  Censor  himself  was  too  busy  that 
day  to  undertake  his  Majesty's  first  lesson,  being  then  en 
gaged  in  cutting  out  from  the  dispatches  all  references  to 
the  Atlantic  Ocean,  and  it  fell  to  me  to  act  as  the  Caliph's 
mentor. 

"  And,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  "  for  the  occa 
sion  I  designate  you  as  Special  Deputy  Censor  with  com 
plete  authority  over  everything  you  may  chance  to  see  and 
hear." 

"  A  censor  on  the  golf  links?  "  I  said. 

"No  precautions  must  be  overlooked,"  said  the  P.  C. 
"  His  Majesty,  of  course,  will  only  be  referring  to  the  ball 
or  to  some  tree  that  may  chance  to  get  into  the  way.  But 
his  remarks  may  be  overheard,  misinterpreted,  and  imme- 


THE  CALIPH  AND  APAWAMIS       53 

diately  transmitted  to  Madagascar,  where  they  will  be 
seized  upon  as  proof  that  the  war  is  going  ill  for  Mesopo 
tamia  and  that  the  royal  temper  is  cracking  under  the 
strain." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  P.  C.  spoke  like  a  fool.  On  the 
links,  as  well  as  off,  his  Majesty  was  always  the  gentleman 
and  the  monarch.  As  I  teed  up,  he  lifted  a  kindly  finger 
and  remarked:  "  Sinbad,  remember  now,  no  diplomacy!  " 

"  Royal  Delight,"  I  said,  "  diplomacy?  I  am  a  plain 
newspaper  man,  and  I  say  only  what  comes  first  to  my 
mind." 

"  I  mean  that  you  are  to  put  up  your  very  best  game, 
Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  I  won't  stand  for  calculated  indiscre 
tions." 

I  did  my  best  to  obey,  but  an  unforeseen  difficulty  arose 
with  the  caddies.  To  them  his  Majesty  on  the  golf  links 
was  still  his  Majesty,  and  the  thought  of  his  defeat  at 
the  hands  of  a  foreign  and  infidel  scribbler  was  not  to  be 
tolerated.  Wherefore  the  caddies,  both  the  Caliph's  and 
mine,  began  to  practise  frightfulness.  They  manipulated 
the  balls  with  an  expert  heel-and-toe  motion,  mine  into  the 
rough  and  the  Caliph's  out  of  the  ditch.  They  dropped 
balls  from  their  pockets,  the  Caliph's  on  the  further  side 
of  the  pond  and  mine  backwards  into  the  water.  And  they 
counted  systematically,  adding  a  stroke  to  the  hole  for  Sin- 
bad  and  subtracting  two  from  the  Caliph's  score. 

At  the  fifth  hole  the  Caliph  caught  on,  and  a  new  brace 
of  caddies  was  requisitioned.  Automatically  they  fell  into 
the  same  procedure,  and  for  the  first  time  I  saw  the  glint 
of  wrath  in  the  royal  eye. 


54  SINBAD 

I  interceded  for  the  boys.  "  It  is  a  very  comprehensible 
case  of  loyalty,  Topmost  One,"  I  said. 

"  Nevertheless,  Sinbad,"  he  said,  "  I  insist  upon  a  caddy 
who  will  act  up  to  his  duty  and  conscience,  fearing  neither 
Caliph  nor  Vizier,  neither  God  nor  man." 

I  thought  for  a  moment  and  said:  "  My  journalistic  ex 
perience,  oh  Merciful,  has  been  gained  entirely  in  America, 
but  if  analogy  counts,  I  should  say  that  perhaps  a  couple 
of  office  boys  from  the  Bagdad  Buzzer  would  nearest  an 
swer  the  description." 

And  so  it  turned  out.  But  I  have  wandered  from  the 
original  point  which  concerns  the  Caliph  and  the  War  Cabi 
net.  At  that  meeting,  therefore,  after  the  Caliph's  first 
game,  the  monarch  sat  silent,  sketching  idly  with  a  pencil 
upon  the  margin  of  a  model  Defense  Loan  bond,  while  the 
Minister  of  High  and  Low  Finance  spoke  of  the  decline  of 
the  Madagascar  mark.  It  was  the  Minister's  opinion  that 
if  the  mark  continued  to  depreciate  another  ten  per  cent., 
it  would  mean  disaster  for  Madagascar;  yes,  it  would  mean 
Revolution  in  the  enemy's  country — the  Minister  of  Fi 
nance  was  exultant. 

The  Caliph  looked  up  quickly.  "  Revolution?  "  he  said. 
"  Where?  " 

"  In  Madagascar,  your  Majesty,"  said  the  Minister  of 
Finance. 

"  Oh,"  said  the  Caliph,  in  obvious  disappointment,  and 
then  as  the  eyes  of  the  Cabinet  turned  curiously  upon  him, 
he  blushed.  The  Grand  Vizier  showed  me  the  sketch  that 
the  Caliph  had  been  engaged  upon  while  the  Minister  of 
Finance  was  speaking.  It  showed  in  rough  outline  an  im- 


THE  CALIPH  AND  APAWAMIS       55 

proved  form  of  putter,  leaded  near  the  tip,  and  longer  by 
an  inch  than  the  club  his  Majesty  had  employed  yesterday 
with  but  indifferent  success. 

"  Now,  what  does  all  this  mean,  Sinbad?  "  said  the  Grand 
Vizier.  "  On  no  less  than  three  occasions  since  then  his 
Majesty  has  asked  me  whether  there  were  any  chance  of 
a  revolution  here  in  Mesopotamia.  I  assured  him  no.  He 
seemed  disappointed.  He  has  also  asked  the  Minister  of 
Finance  whether  there  were  any  signs  of  a  breakdown  in 
our  national  credit  leading  to  popular  dissatisfaction,  and 
when  the  Minister  of  Finance  said  no,  his  Majesty  again 
looked  discontented.  He  has  also  asked  the  Minister  of 
War  what  is  the  outlook  for  a  military  scandal  of  suffi 
cient  proportions  to  bring  about  a  popular  uprising,  and 
when  the  Minister  of  War  declared  there  was  absolutely 
no  such  scandal  in  sight,  his  Majesty  shook  his  head  sadly 
and  walked  away.  Now,  what  does  this  mean?  " 

I  had  a  glimpse  of  what  it  might  mean  only  this  morn 
ing,  when  the  Caliph  came  into  my  office,  just  off  the  Bureau 
of  Engraving  and  Sociology,  and  sat  down  on  the  edge  of 
the  typewriter  desk. 

"  Sinbad,"  he  said,  "  I  shall  never  get  my  score  down 
to  90  while  the  war  lasts.  What  with  the  War  Cabinet 
and  the  administrative  bureaus,  I  am  kept  busy  five  hours 
in  the  day.  For  that  matter,  when  peace  comes,  it  will 
not  be  much  better.  The  responsibilities  of  kingship  are 
many.  On  the  other  hand,  look  at  what  has  happened  to 
Nicholas  of  Russia;  absolutely  no  worry  and  all  the  time 
he  wants." 

He  looked  straight  in  front  of  him. 


i 


56  SINBAD 

"  But,  Sire,  your  game  is  improving,"  I  said. 

"  I  don't  imagine  I  shall  ever  make  an  85  if  I  keep  at  it 
to  the  end  of  my  life,  Sinbad.  I  haven't  the  time  for  prac 
tice.  The  people  of  Mesopotamia  are  terribly  loyal." 

He  sighed. 


STORY  OF  THE  TROUBLED  FOUR 

SHORTLY  after  the  declaration  of  war  against  Mada 
gascar,  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  was  walking 
with  his  sword-bearer  after  nightfall  in  the  outskirts  of  the 
capital,  when  his  ears  were  suddenly  assailed  by  the  sound 
of  lamentation  emanating  from  a  little  group  of  citizens 
dispersed  upon  the  steps  of  an  old  mosque  in  various  atti 
tudes  of  grief.  They  were  four  in  number. 

Addressing  himself  to  the  one  of  the  four  who  seemed  to 
have  the  firmest  control  over  his  emotions,  a  portly  mer 
chant  of  middle-age,  in  a  silk  hat  with  a  garden  rake  across 
his  knees  and  a  package  of  seeds  and  a  watering-pot  in  his 
arms,  "  Bismillah,"  said  the  disguised  monarch,  "  why  this 
effluxion  of  woe  at  a  time  when  all  good  men  should  cheer 
fully  be  mustering  for  the  service  of  Caliph  and  country?  " 

The  citizen  in  the  silk  hat  thereupon  proceeded,  without 
letting  go  either  the  seeds  or  the  watering-pot,  to  smite  his 
breast  with  his  fists,  a  performance  which  elicited  a  glint 
of  admiration  from  the  dusky  eyes  of  the  royal  sword- 
bearer. 

"  Sympathetic  strangers,"  said  he  of  the  silk  hat,  "  you 
have  hit  upon  the  crux  of  the  tragedy.  Personally  I  am 
bewailing  the  vagueness  of  the  farmer  and  the  treachery 
of  the  soil,  in  this  hour  of  crisis." 

"  Now  by  the  beards  of  the  Board  of  Estimate,  that  is 

57 


58  SINBAD 

an  extraordinary  way  of  putting  things.  Speak!  "  said  the 
Caliph,  and  he  squatted  on  the  mosque  steps  at  the  elbow 
of  the  man  with  the  silk  hat. 

"  I  am  only  too  happy  to  explain/'  said  the  latter.  "  Up 
to  the  outbreak  of  the  war  I  was  a  trafficker  in  securities 
and  contingencies  in  the  Street  of  the  Golden  Wall.  In 
my  day  I  have  sold  short  and  I  have  bought  long  and  some 
times  I  have  played  both  ends  against  the  middle,  and  so 
I  prospered.  Nevertheless,  when  war  was  declared  I  re 
duced  my  office  hours  to  a  minimum,  purchased  a  large  plot 
of  ground  on  the  other  side  of  the  Tigris,  and  prepared  to 
do  my  bit,  as  the  Koran  puts  it,  for  the  nation's  food 
supply." 

"  For  this  thou  shalt  have  honor  in  this  world  and  glory 
in  the  bosom  of  the  Prophet,"  said  the  Caliph  solemnly. 

"  Let  me  be  frank,"  said  the  man  of  the  silk  hat.  "  While 
I  am  sincerely  anxious  to  do  my  best  for  the  country,  there 
was  an  auxiliary  reason.  I  frequently  wearied  of  my  trade 
in  the  Street  of  the  Golden  Wall  and  found  myself  longing 
for  the  eternal  simplicities  and  realities.  Ours  is  after  all 
a  precarious  and  unsubstantial  occupation.  We  deal  in 
credits,  promises,  futures,  hypotheses,  discounts,  and  all 
matter  of  vague  commodities.  Now,  I  said  to  myself,  com 
pared  with  these  shadowy  objects,  what  is  the  most  sub 
stantial,  real,  tangible,  definite  thing  there  is?  And  the 
answer  was  obviously,  Earth,  the  good,  fresh  soil,  which 
no  Board  of  Directors,  or  merger,  or  pool,  or  decision  of 
the  Supreme  Cadis  can  alter  or  take  away.  And  I  said  to 
myself,  in  contrast  with  my  own  speculative  trade,  what  is 
the  most  definite,  tangible,  real  occupation?  And  the  an- 


THE  TROUBLED  FOUR  59 

swer  was  obviously,  the  farmer's.     Kismet.     It  was  not 
to  be." 

"And  wherefore?"  said  the  Caliph. 

The  merchant  deposited  the  watering-pot  and  the  pack 
age  of  seeds  on  the  ground,  rested  the  rake  against  the  wall 
of  the  mosque,  removed  his  hat  and  hung  it  on  one  of  the 
prongs,  and  wiped  his  brow. 

"  The  vaguest,  obscurest,  most  hesitant  and  uncertain  of 
human  beings  is  the  tiller  of  the  soil,"  he  said.  "  A  farmer 
knows  neither  time  nor  space  nor  the  weather.  Ask  him 
what  is  the  distance  to  the  village  of  Hammadieh  and  he 
will  reckon  that  he  really  couldn't  say,  but  after  you  had 
walked  quite  a  piece  it  might  be  perhaps  half  a  camel's 
journey.  Ask  him  how  large  a  farm  he  cultivates,  and  he 
tells  you  he  has  never  stopped  to  calculate,  and  there  is 
besides  the  new  pasture  on  the  other  side  of  the  road ; 
though  there  is  no  apparent  reason  why  the  new  pasture 
should  prevent  him  from  making  his  calculation.  Ask  him 
what  is  his  yield  for  the  acre,  and  he  says  that  it  varies 
a  good  deal,  but  he  will  not  tell  you  the  maximum  and 
minimum  of  variation.  Ask  him  whether  it  will  rain  in 
the  night,  and  he  says  that  it  is  very  hard  to  tell  at  this 
time  of  the  year." 

"  Distressful  citizen,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  you  are  judging 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  curious,  febrile,  talkative  deni 
zen  of  the  towns.  What  matters  it  to  the  farmer  whether 
the  village  of  Hammadieh  lies  six  miles  beyond  his  domain 
or  twelve?  In  either  case  the  village  will  be  there  when 
one  gets  there.  What  matters  all  this  speculation  about 
acreage  and  croppage?  If  Allah  wills  there  will  be  enough 


60  SINBAD 

to  pay  the  interest  on  the  mortgage;  if  not,  not. 
Selah." 

But  he  of  the  silk  hat  was  not  listening. 

"You  see  a  rural  child  playing  about  on  the  threshing- 
floor,"  he  said.  "  You  smile  at  her  and  ask  her  father 
how  many  are  the  children  the  will  of  Allah  has  bestowed 
on  him.  Now  you  would  imagine  his  knowledge  of  that 
would  be  fairly  definite.  But  he  only  ponders  and  replies 
that  there  are  quite  a  good  many  if  you  reckon  Selim,  who 
lives  down  yonder  by  the  Shaat-el-Mustapha,  and  if  you 
count  Fatima — he  calls  her  Fatimmy — who  is  married  to 
the  keeper  of  the  caravanserai  down  in  Hammadieh.  Now 
I  ask  you,  is  a  son  any  the  less  a  son  because  he  lives  quite 
a  ways  down  towards  the  Shaat-what  you  may  call  it,  and 
is  a  daughter  any  the  more  a  daughter  because  she  is  mar 
ried  to  an  innkeeper  on  the  other  side  of  the  Tigris?  " 

In  a  new  outburst  of  grief  he  reached  up  to  his  gray 
locks  and  tore  out  a  handful.  This  seemed  to  quiet  him 
and  he  proceeded: 

"As  to  the  tilling  of  the  soil  itself,  honorific  stranger, 
it  is  the  most  speculative  business  there  is.  I  have  bought 
and  read  garden  books  and  I  know.  Either  the  garden 
has  too  much  acid  or  too  much  alkali;  in  either  case  one 
may  count  upon  a  superfluity  of  insect  pests  and  fungi. 
Then  there  are  the  vicissitudes  of  rain,  snow,  frost,  hail, 
drought,  flood,  sun,  cloud,  thunder,  and  the  chance  that 
a  bumper  crop  in  Baluchistan  will  knock  the  bottom  out  of 
the  market  and  compel  you  to  feed  your  millet  to  the 
camels." 


THE  TROUBLED  FOUR  61 

He  wept  bitterly  and  we  sat  silent  until  his  grief  might 
abate,  which  it  ultimately  did. 

"  And  that,"  he  said,  "  oh  well-mannered  and  attentive 
stranger,  is  the  source  of  my  woe.  Can  it  be  that  after  all 
I  have  given  up  the  comparative  security  of  my  occupation 
in  the  Street  of  the  Golden  Wall  for  a  gamble  in  the  sub 
urbs?  And  more  than  that,  am  I,  in  the  present  hour  of 
national  emergency,  doing  my  best  for  my  country  by  tak 
ing  chances  on  a  truck  farm  when  I  might  be  rendering 
substantial  service  by  selling  Spring  barley  short  in  my 
office?  By  returning  to  my  familiar  field  of  operations 
I  can  render  to  my  country,  in  the  form  of  excess  profits 
tax,  a  thousand  times  the  value  I  can  extract  from  the 
ground  in  the  form  of  food.  That  is  the  sorrow  which 
gnaws  at  my  heart.  I  have  spoken." 

At  this  moment  there  arose  one  of  his  companions  who 
had  hitherto  been  silent,  and  he  tore  his  outing  shirt  in 
two  and  cried,  "  What  is  your  grief  to  mine — " 

But  of  that  later. 


STORY  OF  THE  TROUBLED  FOUR 
(Continued) 

THE  Caliph,  as  became  a  man  of  tact  and  discernment, 
waited  courteously  until  the  second  stranger  had  fin 
ished  rending  his  shirt  and  beating  his  head  against  the 
steps  of  the  mosque,  a  process  which  seemed  to  afford  him 
considerable  relief. 

Then,  in  a  voice  of  commiseration  and  wonder,  "  Tell  me, 
Disconsolate  Inhabitant,"  he  said,  "  who  are  you  and  what 
grief  impels  you,  in  these  times  of  war,  to  destroy  a  gar 
ment  which,  at  the  very  least,  might  be  converted  into  two 
dozen  tobacco  pouches  for  our  brave  men  in  the  training 
camps?  " 

The  other  replied  in  a  voice  that  still  showed  the  effects 
of  the  violent  exercise  in  which  he  had  been  indulging,  "  I 
am,  oh  Inquirer,  a  delegate  to  the  National  Council  of 
Elders  from  the  Thirteenth  Bagdad  District.  I  am  looking 
forward  to  the  imminent  arrival  of  a  Commission  from  our 
ally,  the  Government  of  Russia.  And  I  am  torn  in  two 
between  the  correct  pronunciation  of  Tchkheidze  and 
regret  for  my  neglected  education.  When  the  time 
arrives  for  filing  past  the  Russian  commissioners  and 
shaking  hands,  what  am  I  to  say  to  them  in  their  native 
tongue?  " 

"It  is  a  grave  problem,"  said  the  Caliph  thoughtfully, 

62 


THE  TROUBLED  FOUR  63 

"  though  I  am  under  the  impression  that  the  accent  in 
the  Russian  language  is  usually  on  the  twelfth  syllable 
from  the  end." 

"  Even  so,"  said  the  unhappy  stranger.  "  Only  none  of 
the  words  in  my  Russian  vocabulary  answers  to  that  de 
scription.  I  know  l  samovar/  and  I  know  '  Duma,'  and  I 
know  '  caviar ';  but  I  ask  you,  are  these  enough  to  ex 
press  the  pride  and  the  confidence  I  experience  in  welcom 
ing  the  cooperation  of  the  Russian  people  in  the  struggle 
of  democracy  against  autocracy?  There  is  only  one  possible 
answer." 

"  You  were  speaking  of  a  neglected  education,"  said  the 
Caliph.  "  If  in  your  youth  you  were  deprived  of  the  oppor 
tunities  for  self-improvement — " 

The  stranger  wiped  the  tears  from  his  eyes  and  shook 
his  head. 

"  Oh,  I  was  educated  all  right,"  he  said.  "  I  learned 
how  to  bound  Bolivia  and  Nova  Zembla  and  how  to  deter 
mine  the  physiological  effects  of  alcohol.  I  passed  my  ex 
aminations  in  adenoids,  comparative  literature,  and  how 
.many  square  yards  of  wall  paper  are  necessary  to  paper 
a  room  without  covering  the  floor  and  the  windows.  Later 
I  became  acquainted  with  the  structural  difficulties  of  Cae 
sar's  bridge  across  the  Rhine,  a  subject  complicated  by  the 
fact  that  the  bridge  was  chiefly  built  in  the  ablative  abso 
lute.  I  was  taught  how  many  parasangs  the  Greeks  marched 
from  a  town  that  has  been  in  ruins  for  two  thousand  years 
to  a  place  that  was  never  of  any  importance.  I  read 
'L'Abbe  Constantin '  and  'La  Bataille  des  Dames/  but 


64  SINBAD 

the  other  day,  when  we  were  preparing  to  receive  Joffre 
Pasha—" 

The  Caliph  touched  his  jeweled  turban. 

"  A  great  warrior,  though  an  infidel ;  Allah  deal  with  him 
according  to  his  deserts,"  he  said. 

"When  we  were  told  that  we  should  have  a  chance  to 
shake  Joffre  Pasha's  hand  and  speak  to  him  in  his  own 
language,"  went  on  the  Elder  from  the  Thirteenth  Bag 
dad  District,  "  I  was  in  a  panic.  What  good  to  me  were 
all  my  efforts  with  the  irregular  verbs  in  the  language  of 
the  French?  I  could  neither  understand  the  man  nor  speak 
to  him.  In  my  trouble  I  consulted  one  of  my  fellow- 
Elders,  from  a  back-country  district  near  Baluchistan,  where 
the  people  practise  a  broad  humor  often  bordering  on  fri 
volity.  It  had  occurred  to  me  that  I  might  stop  in  front 
of  our  distinguished  visitor  and  shout  '  Vive  le  Joffre!  y 
But  this  friend  of  mine,  El  Djones,  shook  his  head  and  said 
the  secret  service  men  might  interfere. 

" l  But  you  might  do  this/  said  El  Djones ;  £  you  don't 
have  to  deliver  an  oration,  you  know.  Just  shake  his  hand 
and  say,  "  Bapaume,  n'est-ce  pas?  "  or  something  felicitous 
like  that.  It'll  show  him  you  have  been  following  up  his 
work.' 

"  But  that  har^Sy  seemed  appropriate.  '  If  only  I  could 
recall  a  phrase  or  two  from  "  L'Abbe  Constantin," '  I  said. 
'  Only  that's  the  curse  of  modern  education.' 

"  'But  you  remember  something? 9  said  El  Djones. 

" '  Yes,'  I  said  bitterly,  c  I  remember  Do  you  have  the 
Umbrella  of  the  sister-in-law?  ' 

"  '  That's  all  right,'  said  El  Djones.    '  Joffre  Pasha  won't 


THE  TROUBLED  FOUR  65 

know  what  you  are  saying  to  him  anyhow.  And  if  he  does, 
so  much  the  better;  he  might  answer  you.  Say  to  him, 
"  Bonjour,  Marshal  Joffre,  do  you  have  the  umbrella  of  the 
sister-in-law?  "  and  he'll  smile  and  probably  say,  "  No,  but 
I  have  the  goat  of  the  Kaiser,"  or  something  equally  reas 
suring.'  And  here  El  Djones  slapped  his  leg  and  said  it 
wasn't  a  bad  joke  at  that;  which  is  the  manner  of  these 
people  from  out  Baluchistan  way. 

"  At  any  rate,  I  left  him  and  sought  counsel  from  an 
other  of  my  fellow-members,  Beg  Bey  Baw-stan,  who  came 
into  his  French  irregular  verbs  by  inheritance.  He  offered 
generously  to  write  out  a  sentence  or  two  in  the  language 
of  the  French  which  I  might  commit  to  memory.  I  was 
grateful,  but  declined. 

"  *  That  would  scarcely  come  from  the  heart,'  I  said. 

"£True,  if  odd/  remarked  Beg  Bey  Baw-stan.-  '  But 
why  not  wait  till  this  other  emissary  of  the  French,  this 
Sub- Vizier  Viviani,  has  spoken?  Something  might  occur  to 
you  in  the  meanwhile.' 

" '  I  am  afraid  I  sha'n't  understand  him,  either/  I  said. 

"  '  Just  keep  an  eye  on  me/  said  Beg  Bey  Baw-stan,  '  I'll 
tip  you  off.' 

"  It  was  handsome  in  him.  While  the  Sub- Vizier  Viviani 
was  speaking,  I  kept  my  eyes  glued  on  Beg  Bey  Baw-stan, 
and  when  at  the  end  of  an  impassioned  sentence,  delivered 
with  all  the  native  eloquence  of  the  French,  Beg  Bey  broke 
out  in  laughter,  I  went  him  one  better.  A  good  many  of 
our  fellow-Elders  followed  our  example.  Later  I  discov 
ered  that  Beg  Bey's  amusement  was  evoked  by  Sub-Vizier 
Viviani's  statement  that  in  the  last  six  months  his  coun- 


66  SINBAD 

trymen  had  laid  down  643,253  additional  acres  in  buck 
wheat. 

"  At  any  rate,  so  absorbed  was  I  in  Beg  Bey's  appreciation 
of  the  Sub- Vizier  Viviani's  speech  that  I  forgot  all  about 
my  salutation  to  Joffre  Pasha.  And  then  the  line  formed 
and  we  began  to  march  past." 

The  stranger  bent  his  head  and  was  silent. 

"  Error  is  human  and  Allah  is  the  Compassionate,"  said 
the  Caliph;  "  what  did  you  say  to  this  great  Infidel?  " 

The  stranger  stifled  a  sob: 

"  I  said,  *  Hooray,  Joffre,  merci  beaucoup! ' " 

The  Caliph's  sword-bearer  snickered  and  was  checked  by 
a  stern  glance  from  his  master. 

"  But  that  wasn't  half  bad,"  said  the  Caliph. 

The  stranger  refused  to  be  comforted. 

"  Well,  perhaps  I  got  away  with  it  that  time,"  he  said< 
u  But  what  will  happen  when  the  Russians  come?  " 


STORY  OF  THE  WOMEN  WHO  STOOD  STILL 

DUTY  alone  took  me  away  from  Bagdad  when  I  least 
wanted  to  go.  The  Food  Conservation  Bill  was  be 
ing  debated  in  the  House  of  Elders.  Only  fifty-seven  more 
speeches  twelve  hours  long  and  thirty- two  unconstitu 
tional  amendments  stood  between  the  bill  and  the  Caliph's 
signature,  an  event  on  which  I  had  set  my  heart  to  witness. 
However,  because  of  the  sultry  weather,  several  members 
of  the  House  of  Elders  lost  the  drift  of  their  own  remarks 
when  they  were  just  in  sight  of  the  peroration  about  Meso 
potamia  First  and  had  to  start  all  over  again.  So  it  turned 
out  that  I  lost  nothing  because  of  my  absence  from  Bagdad, 
and  in  a  sense  did  enjoy  a  refreshing  holiday. 

The  circumstances  of  my  departure  were  curious.  I  re 
turned  early  one  morning  to  my  quarters  in  the  palace, 
hard  by  the  Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Polar  Exploration, 
from  an  all-night  session  of  the  House  of  Elders  where  an 
acrimonious  debate  was  under  way  on  an  amendment  to  the 
Food  Conservation  bill  providing  for  the  erection  of  an 
astronomical  observatory  at  Nineveh.  On  my  table  I  found 
a  telegram.  It  was  dated  the  night  before  at  the  capital  of 
Turkestan  and  it  said,  "  Come  at  once — Hassan."  It  was 
from  the  young  Khan  whose  wedding  I  had  but  lately  at 
tended  here  in  Bagdad. 

Immediately  I  sought  out  the  Commander  of  the  Faith 
ful,  whom  I  found  practising  with  his  new  patent  putter  on 

67 


68  SINBAD 

the  golden  carpet  in  the  Hall  of  the  Thousand  Anchorites. 
He  read  the  disturbing  missive,  shook  his  head  sadly,  and 
remarked:  "  It's  about  Ayesha.  You  had  better  go,  Sin- 
bad." 

"  But  if  it  be  the  Princess  who  is  in  need,"  I  said,  "  per 
haps  your  Majesty  himself — " 

"  No,  Sinbad,"  he  said;  "  it's  about  Ayesha,  all  right,  but 
it's  Hassan  who  needs  you.  I  have  been  expecting  this  for 
some  time." 

In  the  early  afternoon  of  the  third  day  I  was  in  the 
Turkestan  capital.  I  bestowed  my  luggage  at  a  caravanserai 
where  the  scribe  offered  me  a  room  with  a  lapis-lazuli  bath 
tub  at  twelve  sequins  a  day,  and  I  said  one  at  two  sequins 
would  do.  He  said,  "  Very  well,"  and  ran  a  comb  through 
his  perfumed  beard,  and  I  left  him  and  made  my  way  to 
the  palace  of  the  Khan. 

Before  the  gates  of  the  palace  a  multitude  was  gathered. 
When  I  had  pushed  my  way  through  the  throng  I  saw  two 
women  who  stood  sentinel  on  either  side  of  the  gates  and 
held  aloft  large  banners  of  white  on  a  cross  staff.  As  I 
looked  closely  at  one  of  the  women,  I  knew  her,  even  through 
her  veil. 

"  Your  Royal  Highness,"  I  stammered. 

"  Even  so,"  said  Ayesha,  but  she  neither  smiled  nor  yet 
gave  any  other  sign  of  recognition. 

"  And  these  banners?  "  I  said. 

"  Read,"  she  replied. 

I  read  the  inscription  on  one  banner  and  it  said:  "  Six 
Million  Women  in  Turkestan  are  in  Fetters."  And  I  read 


WOMEN  WHO  STOOD  STILL         69 

the  inscription  on  the  other  banner  and  it  said:  "  Make 
Turkestan  Safe  for  Its  Mothers."  And  I  asked  the  Prin 
cess  Ayesha,  now  Queen  of  Turkestan,  what  it  all  meant, 
and  she  said:  "  I  am  picketing,  Sinbad." 

"  Against  whom,  Royal  Highness?  " 

"  Against  the  Government." 

"  That  is  to  say,  against  your  royal  husband,  the  Khan?  " 

"  Even  so,  Sinbad." 

Much  perplexed,  I  made  my  way  into  the  palace  and 
was  brought  into  the  presence  of  the  young  Khan,  who 
graciously  raised  me  from  the  floor  after  the  fifth  prostra 
tion  only,  and  said:  "  Thank  you  for  coming,  Sinbad.  I 
am  exceedingly  unhappy.  You  saw  her?  " 

"  Majesty,"  I  said,  "  whatever  may  be  the  Queen's  polit 
ical  views  and  tactics,  I  am  convinced  that  in  her  heart  you 
still—" 

"  Now  by  the  Kumyss-Drinking  Dervish  of  Samarcand," 
cried  the  Khan,  "  but  that  is  the  confusion  of  it  all.  Two 
hours  in  the  day  Ayesha  is  my  enemy.  But  when  she  is 
through  with  sentinel  duty  she  appears  before  me  and  in 
quires  whether  I  have  been  lonely  and  have  I  taken  my  mint 
tablets.  In  passing  through  the  gates  while  she  is  on  her 
beat  I  have  on  occasion  tried  to  address  her,  but  she  has 
refused  to  recognize  me.  And  on  the  other  hand,  at  dinner 
I  have  sometimes  ventured  to  ask  her  what  ought  to  be 
done  about  woman's  rights  in  Turkestan,  and  she  says: 
'  Don't  let's  talk  about  such  things,  Hassan ;  it's  so  pleasant 
here.' " 

"  Pride  of  the  Steppes,"  I  said,  "  it  is  indeed  confusing." 


70  SINBAD 

"  It  is  distracting,"  said  the  young  Khan.  "  Sometimes 
she  will  come  in  from  sentinel  duty  and  ask  me  how  I  feel ; 
and  I  will  say  that  I  have  a  bad  headache.  'Why?  '  says 
Ayesha.  *  Worrying  about  you  out  there  in  the  sun  and 
amidst  a  gaping  crowd.'  c  You're  a  dear,'  she  will  say,  and 
bring  me  a  wet  towel  for  my  throbbing  temples.  On  such 
occasions,  Sinbad,  I  can  only  ask  myself:  Am  I  or  am  I 
not  a  bigamist?  " 

"  It  is  like  the  old  days  in  Bagdad,  Majesty,"  I  ventured. 

He  smiled  wanly.  "  Once  when  she  had  been  at  her  post 
for  near  two  hours  and  I  watching  her  from  the  window,  I 
recalled  that  she  had  eaten  little  for  lunch,  and  I  sent  her 
out  some  sandwiches.  You  know  the  kind  women  like — a 
bit  of  pomegranate  jam  and  an  olive  between  two  wafers. 
She  sent  them  back  indignantly.  But  when  she  came  off 
duty,  she  asked  for  the  sandwiches." 

"  There  is  a  simple  way  out,  Majesty,"  I  said.  "  Why  not 
give  them  the  vote?  " 

He  gave  a  proud  lift  to  his  chin  that  reminded  me  irre 
sistibly  of  his  great  ancestor,  Genghis  Khan,  whom,  of 
course,  I  will  not  pretend  to  have  met  in  person. 

"I  will  not  be  coerced/'  he  said.  Then,  thoughtfully: 
"It  isn't  quite  fair,  Sinbad.  Here  they  are  asking  for  a 
man's  privileges  and  they  employ  a  woman's  weapons.  She 
knows  how  it  hurts  me  to  have  her  out  there  for  two  hours 
on  the  hot  pavement ;  and  as  for  throwing  her  into  prison — 
well,  you  can  judge  for  yourself.  So  I  have  my  Minister  of 
Public  Traffic  run  her  in  once  in  so  often,  and  then  I  have  a 
lot  of  blank  pardons  already  signed;  and  thus  we  live.  If 
she  were  only  permanently  in  opposition,  I  could  harden  my- 


WOMEN  WHO  STOOD  STILL         71 

self  to  punishment,  out  of  a  sense  of  national  duty.  But 
just  as  I  am  about  to  take  action,  she  comes  in,  takes  off  her 
sash,  throws  it  on  the  piano,  and  offers  me  nougat." 

"  It  is  confusing,"  I  said. 

"  It  confuses  a  great  many  people.  You  know,  there  are 
two  parties  among  the  women  themselves.  The  Maximalists 
insist  that  Ayesha  has  no  right  to  give  me  a  wet  cloth  when 
I  get  a  headache  from  her  picketing,  but  the  Minimalists 
say  it's  all  right.  And  then  there's  poor  Abdullah." 

"  You  spell  that  with  a  double  1,  Majesty?  " 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "Abdullah  is  the  head  watchman  of 
the  royal  grounds.  The  other  day  he  appears  before  me 
and  beats  his  forehead  on  the  carpet  and  cries,  '  Grant,  oh 
Star  of  the  Oxus,  that  I  may  be  released  from  your  royal 
service.'  I  asked  him  why  and  he  said  his  nervous  system 
was  breaking  down  because  of  Ayesha.  As  his  Queen  she 
expects  him  to  preserve  order,  and  as  suffragist  she  is  sub 
ject  to  arrest.  *  From  2  to  4  in  the  afternoon  she  is  under 
your  authority,  Abdullah,'  I  said  to  him.  But  he  said  the 
other  day  when  his  own  time-piece  showed  ten  minutes  to 
four,  and  he  ordered  her  to  keep  on  moving,  she  showed 
him  her  wrist  watch  and  it  was  two  minutes  after  the  hour 
and  he  was  guilty  of  Icse  ma  jest  e,  which  means  boiling  oil. 
'  Under  the  circumstances/  pleaded  Abdullah,  '  what  is  a 
poor  cop  to  do?  '  " 

"  Perhaps  with  a  sense  of  humor,"  I  ventured. 

"  But  I  have  none,"  Hassan  replied.  "  Now  it's  different 
with  that  light-hearted  Minister  of  Finance  of  mine,  old 
Hafiz  ben  AH.  His  wife  is  in  the  same  picketing  squad  with 
Ayesha.  Hafiz  says  that  formerly  he  never  saw  his  wife 


72  SINBAD 

because  she  was  so  busy.    But  now  he  knows  where  to  find 
her  every  day  between  2  and  4." 

"  In  that  case  there  is  only  one  solution,  Majesty,"  I 
said.  "  Give  them  the  vote  and  make  Turkestan  Safe  for 
Its  Fathers." 


STORY  OF  THE  COST  OF  LIVING 

THE  circumstances  under  which  an  offer  of  the  post  of 
Minister  of  High  and  Low  Finance  for  Mesopotamia 
was  recently  made  to  the  writer  were  as  follows.    I  recount 
the  fact  in  no  spirit  of  personal  exultation,  but  merely  to 
show  how  far-reaching  is  the  influence  of  the  press. 

No  newspaper  story  of  modern  times,  I  have  been  told, 
ever  attracted  as  much  attention  as  my  recent  dispatch  in 
which  I  described  the  sinking  of  five  million  tons  of  Meso- 
potamian  shipping  by  the  Madagascar  submarines  in  the 
course  of  a  month.  Inasmuch  as  the  entire  merchant  ma 
rine  of  Mesopotamia  has  never  exceeded  two  and  a  half 
million  tons,  one  will  understand  the  sensation  which  my  dis 
patch  created  in  Bagdad.  There  was  a  demand  for  inves 
tigation  in  the  House  of  Elders,  the  Minister  of  the  Navy 
suffered  a  severe  nervous  breakdown  and  took  to  bed  and 
my  dispatch  must  have  come  to  the  Caliph's  attention. 

At  any  rate,  early  one  forenoon,  the  Commander  of  the 
Faithful,  having  holed  out  in  three  on  the  difficult  four 
teenth,  which  is  one  below  par,  and  having  addressed  his 
customary  brief  prayer  of  thanks  in  the  direction  of  Mecca, 
turned  to  me  and  said,  "  Sinbad,  does  the  difference  between 
twelve  million  sequins  and  fifteen  billion  sequins  strike  you 
as  very  important?  " 

I  said,  "  Majesty,  I  am  a  plain  newspaper  man,  and  three 
billion  dollars  one  way  or  the  other  means  nothing  to  me." 

73 


74  SINBAD 

"How,  then,"  said  the  Caliph,  "would  you  like  to  be 
Minister  of  Finance  in  my  Cabinet?  " 

"  You  are  jesting,  Illuminated  One,"  I  said;  but  his  Maj 
esty  went  on  to  explain. 

It  would  seem  that  on  the  preceding  day  the  Minister  of 
High  and  Low  Finance  had  a  long  audience  with  his  Maj 
esty.  In  the  course  of  this  interview  it  appeared  that  the  war 
expenditure  up  to  date  had  reached  the  sum  of  fifteen  bil 
lion  sequins,  that  the  daily  expenditure  was  now  running 
about  forty  million  sequins,  and  that  the  national  debt  at 
the  end  of  the  war  would  probably  stand  at  forty  billions. 
Thereupon  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  who  had  been 
listening  rather  intermittently,  interrupted  to  ask  the  Min 
ister  of  High  and  Low  Finance  what  progress  he  had  made 
with  the  Summer  Vacation  Loan  project. 

The  Summer  Vacation  Loan  was  a  pet  scheme  of  his  Maj 
esty's.  It  called  for  a  bond  issue  of  twelve  million  sequins 
to  pay  for  a  two  weeks'  vacation  for  every  head  of  a  family 
in  Bagdad  who  could  not  afford  a  holiday  on  his  own  ac 
count. 

"  I  have  often  thought,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  what 
it  must  mean  to  the  average  laborer  to  go  through  his  three 
score  years  and  ten  without  a  bit  of  playtime  in  that  whole 
long  span,  without  a  respite  save  that  which  comes  to  him 
from  ill-health  and  enforced  idleness.  My  Minister  of 
Statistics  and  Elaboration  has  estimated  that  there  are  400,- 
ooo  such  deserving  citizens  in  Bagdad  and  that  they  could 
be  sent  away  for  two  weeks  to  the  Baluchistan  hills  or  to 
Basra-by-the-Sea  at  a  cost  of  thirty  sequins  per  head." 

The  Minister  of  High  and  Low  Finance  shook  his  head 


THE  COST  OF  LIVING  75 

and  said  that  the  thing  was  out  of  the  question.  There 
was  the  war  to  think  of,  and  after  that  there  would  be  the 
problem  of  bringing  back  the  finances  of  the  country  to  a 
peace  basis.  To  the  latter  task,  he  hinted,  his  Majesty 
should  be  giving  much  thought. 

Thereupon  the  Caliph  smote  his  hand  on  the  table  with 
such  violence  that  the  Principal  Censor  stuck  his  head 
through  the  door  and  asked  if  it  was  something  that  ought 
to  be  written  up  for  the  press.  But  his  Majesty  told  him 
not  to  be  a  fool,  and,  addressing  the  Minister  of  High  and 
Low  Finance,  he  said,  "  Know  you  what,  Ali  ben  Daoud? 
I  think  it  were  better  for  the  people  of  Mesopotamia  if  we 
never  get  back  to  a  peace  basis." 

"Unquestionably  your  Majesty  is  right,"  said  the  Min 
ister  of  Finance,  "  if  only  I  understood  the  drift  of  your 
remarks." 

"  It  is  very  simple,  Ali  ben  Daoud,"  said  the  Caliph. 
"  Do  you  remember  how  on  one  occasion,  some  time  before 
the  war,  I  wanted  two  million  sequins  to  erect  a  public  bath 
house  in  the  workmen's  district  in  Bagdad?  You  said  then 
that  the  thing  was  impossible  because  it  would  send  the 
tax  rate  up  one  and  one-half  points  to  2.2345." 

"You  have  spoken,  Undeniable  One,"  said  the  Finance 
Minister. 

"  You  will  also  remember  that  when  I  suggested  a  mini 
mum  wage  of  three  sequins  a  month  for  the  little  girls  in 
the  Euphrates  cotton  mills — that  was  also  before  the  war — 
you  said  that  the  State  could  not  assume  an  expenditure 
which  might  run  up  to  five  million  sequins  a  year  for  the 
whole  country." 


76  SINBAD 

"  That  was  my  firm  conviction,  Majesty,"  said  the  Min 
ister  of  Finance. 

"  But  only  just  now,"  continued  the  Caliph,  "  you  recom 
mended  an  appropriation  of  thirty  million  sequins  for  the 
construction  of  a  system  of  water  tanks  to  supply  the  camels 
that  drag  the  timber  that  is  to  go  into  the  new  medical 
school  that  is  to  train  the  doctors  that  are  to  examine  the 
recruits  that  are  to  take  part  in  the  expedition  against  Mada 
gascar.  Why  is  five  million  sequins  in  peace  time  too  much 
for  the  children,  and  why  is  thirty  million  sequins  in  war 
time  a  meager  appropriation  for  the  camels?  " 

"  The  answer,  oh  Unapproachable  One,"  said  the  Min 
ister,  "  is  very  simple.  It  is  because  of  the  unavoidable 
effect  of  the  short-term  non-convertible  bonds  on  the  pre 
vailing  rate  for  call  money  arising  from  the  depleted  silver 
reserve  in  Patagonia." 

"  To  be  sure,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  I  never  thought  of 
that." 

"  And  besides,  your  Majesty,"  said  the  Minister  of  HigK 
and  Low  Finance,  "  is  it  proper,  is  it  just  to  burden  the 
future  generations  with  taxes  to  pay  for  public  baths  and 
minimum  wages  for  the  present  generation?  JVe  must  not 
be  selfish.  We  must  think  of  our  children." 

The  Caliph  waved  his  hand  in  fine  impatience. 

"  I'll  tell  you  what,  AH  ben  Daoud,"  he  said.  "  On  this 
subject  of  our  duty  to  our  children  there  is  altogether  too 
much  of  what  Sinbad's  infidel  countrymen  in  their  quaint 
vernacular  call  'bull.'  When  there  is  something  we  very 
much  like  to  do  we  make  it  out  to  be  a  duty  to  our  children. 


THE  COST  OF  LIVING  77 

And  when  there  is  something  we  are  disinclined  to  do  we 
discover  that  it  is  our  duty  to  our  children  not  to  do  it. 
That  is  what  the  rascal  Nubar  Dowleh  said  when  we  caught 
him  stealing  from  the  Paymaster's  funds;  he  said  he  was 
providing  for  his  children;  only  the  dancing  girls  in  the 
bazaar  could  tell  another  story.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the 
course  of  my  private  investigations  with  Mesrour  I  have 
discovered  that  those  of  my  subjects  who  love  their  children 
most,  namely,  the  poor,  are  the  ones  who  neglect  to  provide 
for  their  future." 

"Who  shall  question  the  will  of  Allah?"  muttered  the 
Minister  of  Finance. 

"  But  suppose  my  Vacation  Loan  does  impose  a  burden 
on  the  future,"  insisted  the  Caliph,  riding  his  hobby  furi 
ously.  "Why  is  it  different  from  the  war  taxes  which  the 
future  generations  will  have  to  pay?  Put  it  this  way,  AH 
ben  Daoud.  Why  should  we  be  so  watchful  of  our  pennies 
when  it  comes  to  the  cost  of  living,  and  pour  out  our  bil 
lions  when  it  concerns  what  you  might  call  the  cost  of 
dying?  " 

"  The  reply  is  obvious,  oh  Strenuous  One,"  said  the  Min 
ister  of  Finance.  "All  you  have  to  do  is  to  multiply  the 
bank  discounts  by  the  rate  of  exchange  at  Amsterdam  and 
subtract  the  quotations  on  steel  billets,  f.  o.  b.,  at  Baby 
lon." 

"I  never  thought  of  that,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  Only  it 
seemed  to  me  that  if  future  generations  did  not  object  to 
paying  taxes  on  forty  billion  sequins  which  represent  the 
cost  of  making  the  world  safe  for  our  children,  they  might 


78  SINBAD 

not  object  to  paying  taxes  on  a  twelve  million  Vacation  Loan 
which  would  make  our  children  safe  for  the  world,  by  giv 
ing  them  a  healthier  set  of  fathers." 

"  Economic  heresy,  Sire!  "  said  the  Minister. 

The  Caliph  sighed.  But  if  he  was  convinced  for  the 
moment,  later  his  doubts  returned.  He  told  me  so  when  he 
made  me  the  offer  of  AH  Ben  Daoud's  job.  "  He  will  do 
well  enough  for  the  war,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  But 
when  peace  comes  I  want  to  go  on  thinking  in  billions." 

"  But,  Ineffable  One,"  I  protested.  "  Your  people  will  not 
permit  it.  Me,  an  ignorant  stranger  and  an  Infidel!  " 

"  That's  the  kind  of  financier  I  need,"  he  sighed. 
"  Fore!  " 


STORY  OF  THE  WOMEN  WHO  DID  NOT 
STAND  STILL 

"T\TO  chance  of  its  clearing  up,  Sinbad?  "  said  the 
J^  Caliph. 

We  were  under  a  tree  near  the  fifteenth  green,  his  Maj 
esty,  the  Principal  Censor,  and  I,  and  the  rain  was  falling 
in  sheets.  The  Principal  Censor  had  been  playing  our  best 
ball  and  was  2  up.  The  Caliph  sighed. 

"Personally  I  shouldn't  mind  playing  it  out,"  said  the 
Caliph.  (It  was  his  third  match  since  he  had  taken  up  the 
game.)  "After  all,  what's  a  little  moisture?  How  about 
it,  P.  C.?  " 

"  Your  Mightiness  has  only  to  command,"  said  the  Prin 
cipal  Censor.  "  Nevertheless,  it  is  the  truth  that  I  am  ex 
tremely  susceptible  to  colds  in  the  head,  and  I  hate  to  take 
quinine  in  the  present  national  emergency." 

"  Be  it  so,"  said  the  Caliph,  recalling  perhaps  the  short 
seventeenth  over  the  irrigation  canal,  where  he  regularly 
came  to  grief.  "  Though  I  should  have  made  it  in  less  than 
100.  What  is  the  record  for  the  course,  P.  C.?  " 

"  It's  blank  yards,  your  Majesty,  and  it  has  been  done  in 
blank,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  out  of  force  of  habit. 

The  Caliph  sighed,  but  not  in  discontent,  I  thought. 
Just  as  the  storm  broke  he  had  run  down  a  thirteen-foot 
putt  for  a  three.  So  for  a  time  we  stood  there  with  our 

79 


8o  SINBAD 

backs  to  the  trunk  of  the  mighty  palm,  wrapped  in  our 
mackintoshes,  and  thinking,  as  men  always  do  in  the  face 
of  nature's  magnificent  manifestations,  of  nothing  at  all. 

Then,  "  Sinbad,"  said  the  Caliph,  «  know  you  what  G.  V." 
— now  G.  V.  is  what  we  call  the  Grand  Vizier  when  he  is  not 
present — "  would  have  me  do  now?  He  is  all  for  letting 
the  women  of  Mesopotamia  vote  henceforth ;  vote  for  every 
thing.  He  says  their  services  since  we  went  to  war  have 
proved  their  fitness  for  the  suffrage." 

"  The  women  of  Mesopotamia  have  done  nobly,"  I  said, 
"  though  it  may  be  questioned  whether  a  step  so  far-reach 
ing,  so  to  speak,  and  yet  when  one  considers — " 

The  Caliph  laughed  out  loud. 

"You  are  making  a  noise  like  a  diplomat,  Sinbad,"  he 
said.  (It  is  a  regrettable  fact  that  ever  since  his  Majesty 
took  up  golf  his  vocabulary  has  been  losing  in  refinement.) 
"  It  is  true  that  our  women  have  rallied  magnificently  to 
country  and  flag.  But  does  it  surprise  you  as  much  as  it 
does  the  Grand  Vizier?  " 

"  Illustrious,"  I  said,  "  I  am  but  a  plain  newspaper  man. 
Everything  surprises  me." 

"  Take,  now,  the  case  of  old  P.  C.  here,"  said  the  Caliph, 
patting  the  other  on  his  shoulder.  "  Suppose  I  insisted  on 
playing  out  the  eighteen  holes  and  P.  C.  went  home  with 
the  snuffles.  His  good  wife  Bathsheba  would  immediately 
put  his  feet  into  hot  water  and  mustard  and  give  him  some 
warm  milk  with  figs  to  drink.  She  would  then  wrap  him 
up  in  blankets  and  give  him  aspirin.  Suppose,  now,  that 
the  next  morning  P.  C.,  feeling  much  better,  but  still  a  little 
rocky  and  sentimental,  called  his  wife  unto  him  and  said, 


WOMEN  WHO  DID  NOT  STAND  STILL     81 

1  Oh,  Bathsheba,  thou  art  indeed  one  among  ten  thousand ; 
for  when  I  came  home  with  a  cold  in  the  head  thou  didst 
give  me  milk  with  figs  to  drink  instead  of  setting  me  to  chop 
wood  for  the  fire,  and  thou  didst  wrap  me  in  woolens  in 
stead  of  making  me  sleep  out  on  the  roof  in  the  rain,  and 
thou  didst  give  me  gentle  words  instead  of  assailing  me  with 
the  camel  strap.  Therefore,  do  I  admit  that  thou  art  de 
serving  of  much.' " 

"  Magnificence,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  "  not  thus 
would  I  address  my  wife  Bathsheba;  for  the  occasion  would 
not  be  special;  and  if  I  did,  she  would  think  I  had  gone 
out  of  my  mind." 

"Even  so,  P.  C,"  said  the  Caliph.  "And  the  Grand 
Vizier  is  talking  nonsense  when  he  tells  me  that  the  war  has 
proved  this  or  that  of  our  women,  or  that  our  women  have 
earned  this  or  that  by  their  behavior  during  the  war.  How 
else,  think  you,  did  I  expect  the  women  of  Mesopotamia  to 
behave?  That  they  should  sell  secret  information  to  our 
enemy  of  Madagascar?  That  they  should  fail  to  go  into 
the  fields  and  the  workshops  when  their  husbands  and  sons 
and  brothers  have  been  called  away?  That  they  should  fail 
to  go  without  food  when  there  is  less  for  the  children  and 
without  sleep — aye,  and  without  new  clothes,  if  it  comes  to 
that  bitter  test?  Is  it  on  record  before  this  that  women 
have  deserted  in  the  hour  of  need?  For  several  thousand 
years  women  have  been  taking  husbands  for  worse  quite  as 
often  as  for  better,  and  what  new  thing  has  the  war  shown?  " 

"  Yet  your  allies,  the  people  of  Britain,  have  given  the 
vote  to  women  just  on  that  very  ground,"  I  said,  dropping 
into  an  argumentative  tone  of  which  I  should  have  been  in- 


82  SINBAD 

capable  under  other  circumstances;  but  there  is  something 
lost  to  royalty  in  a  raincoat. 

"  My  allies  of  Britain,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  a  great  and 
well-meaning  people,  have  this  weakness,  that  they  will  do 
things  not  for  the  obvious  reason,  but  for  some  other  rea 
son.  They  have  given  the  vote  to  their  women  because 
there  is  absolutely  no  excuse  why  they  should  not  have  done 
so  long  ago;  but  they  like  to  think  it  is  because  of  some 
thing  new  about  women  that  the  war  has  shown.  The  fact 
is,  Sinbad,  that  this  war  is  not  a  reason,  but  an  opportunity; 
it  supplies  people  with  an  occasion  for  being  surprised  at 
what  they  have  known  all  along.  It  will  be  so  with  my 
allies  of  France.  After  the  war  they  will  give  their  women 
the  vote  in  return  for  the  labors  and  sacrifices  which  the 
women  of  France  have  rendered.  Yet  France  is  the  coun 
try  where  bearded  men  are  not  allowed  to  marry  without 
the  permission  of  their  Maman." 

"  In  Britain  it  is  only  women  of  thirty  and  over  who 
will  be  allowed  to  vote,"  I  said. 

"  That  is  the  genius  of  Britain,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  It 
would  kill  an  Englishman  to  go  all  the  way  at  once.  He 
simply  will  not  stand  for  more  than  half  a  loaf;  a  whole 
loaf  would  choke  him.  No  doubt  the  age  limit  for  women 
voters  in  Britain  will  be  lowered  in  time,  but  there  will  al 
ways  be  a  provision  withholding  the  suffrage  from  red- 
haired  women  between  Whitsuntide  and  Michaelmas  in  the 
Isle  of  Man,  or  something  like  that." 

"  Yet  the  war  has  brought  about  this  change,"  I  insisted. 

His  Majesty  showed  temper. 

"  Not  by  teaching  us  anything  new,  Sinbad,  but  by  shal$- 


WOMEN  WHO  DID  NOT  STAND  STILL    83 

ing  us  up,"  he  said.  "  If  it  is  right  to  give  the  women  their 
vote  now,  they  should  have  had  it  long  ago.  We  don't  know 
any  more  about  women  now  than  we  did  a  thousand  years 
ago.  Only  the  war  has  jarred  things  wide  open.  It  has 
shaken  old,  lazy  habits — " 

"  The  trouble  has  all  along  been  clothes,  Unapproachable 
One,"  said  the  Principal  Censor. 

"How  clothes?" 

"Pockets,  Serenity,"  said  the  Principal  Censor.  "It's 
been  hard  to  concede  equality  to  a  sex  that  specialized  in 
discomfort.  It  is  impossible  to  think  of  the  business  of  the 
world  going  on  without  pockets.  By  putting  on  pockets 
man  has  had  his  hands  free  for  climbing  the  ladder  of  evo 
lution;  but  women,  no;  except  on  golf  coats,  where  there  is 
no  conceivable  use  for  pockets.  Or  umbrellas,  your  Maj 
esty.  Man  gets  an  umbrella  with  a  crook  handle  and  hangs 
it  over  his  arm ;  women  must  have  a  straight  shaft  umbrella 
to  immobilize  one  hand  at  least.  On  the  contrary,  over 
alls—" 

"  P.  C.,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  you  sound  like  your  dis 
patches,  only  more  amusing." 


STORY  OF  THE  BARMECIDE  AND  THE  AFTER- 
DINNER  SPEAKER 

IN  the  absence  of  my  Reader's  Handbook,  I  do  not  re 
call  whether  it  was  my  namesake  Sinbad,  or  that  poor 
devil  Hinbad,  or  only  the  Barber's  Sixth  Brother  who  was 
the  guest  at  the  original  Barmecide's  feast.  The  reader 
will  no  doubt  recall  how  that  beggar  of  old  Bagdad  strayed 
into  the  home  of  the  wealthy  Barmecide,  how  he  was  bid 
den  to  take  his  place  at  the  richly  laden  table,  how  price 
less  plate  was  set  before  him — empty,  and  how  phantom 
dish  after  phantom  dish  appeared  and  disappeared  at  his 
host's  signal,  in  a  manner  distracting  to  a  hungry  stomach, 
though  calculated  to  delight  Mr.  Hoover.  It  is  a  similar  per 
sonal  experience  I  now  have  to  relate. 

The  day  before  the  banquet  tendered  to  the  special  mis 
sion  from  Tegucigalpa  by  the  Bagdad  Chamber  of  Com 
merce  to  celebrate  the  signing  of  a  potash  and  fisheries  con 
vention  between  the  two  countries,  I  was  approached  by 
the  Principal  Censor.  Looking  about  him  cautiously  and 
speaking  behind  his  hand,  the  P.  C.  offered  me  two  tickets 
for  the  banquet,  close  to  the  speakers'  table  and  within  easy 
reach  of  a  side  exit. 

"  But  I  shouldn't  dream  of  depriving  you,  P.  C.,"  I  said. 

"  It's  a  clash  of  duties,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  I  have  tickets 
for  the  opening  performance  of  '  The  Girl  from  Kandahar/ 
and  it  is  essential  that  I  be  there." 

84 


THE  AFTER-DINNER  SPEAKER        85 

"  You  suspect  sedition?  "  I  whispered,  breathlessly. 

"  I  can  hardly  say  what  I  suspect/'  he  replied.  "  But 
I  should  be  derelict  in  my  service  to  his  Majesty  and  the 
country  if  I  missed  the  opening  chorus.  Besides,  Sinbad, 
it  occurred  to  me  that  you  would  be  glad  of  the  opportunity 
to  witness  some  of  our  most  eminent  minds  in  action.  You 
are  a  serious  man,  Sinbad,  and  you  represent  a  serious  jour 
nal  of  opinion,  and  thus  are  eminently  qualified  to  enjoy  an 
intellectual  feast.  It  is  an  offer  I  would  not  make  to  every 
one." 

I  took  the  tickets,  glanced  at  the  back  to  see  whether  the 
war  tax  had  been  paid,  and  thanked  him  heartily.  In  the 
midst  of  a  reporter's  busy  life  an  intellectual  feast,  such  as 
P.  C.  promised,  was  something  to  look  forward  to.  His  only 
stipulation  was  that  if  something  happened  at  the  dinner,  I 
should  call  him  up  not  earlier  than  ten  the  next  morning. 

It  was  a  distinguished  assemblage  that  the  first  speaker, 
the  Minister  of  Extraneous  Affairs,  rose  to  address.  I 
leaned  forward  with  sufficient  eagerness  to  send  a  half-filled 
coffee  cup  hurtling  across  the  lap  of  my  neighbor,  a  tall,  sun- 
browned  young  fellow  from  the  Siamese  Embassy.  He 
thrust  back  his  chair  with  a  deft  movement  of  the  knees 
and  accepted  my  apologies  courteously. 

The  Minister  of  Extraneous  Affairs  began  by  saying  that 
the  occasion  was  an  historic  one.  All  sources  of  misunder 
standing  and  irritation  between  two  great  peoples  had  been 
removed,  and  in  the  absence  of  unforeseen  interruptions  the 
two  Governments  would  cooperate  in  the  work  of  civiliza 
tion.  At  this  juncture  the  speaker  was  irresistibly  reminded 
of  the  story  of  the  Irishman  and  his  goat,  who  were  crossing 


86  SINE  AD 

a  river  in  a  flat-bottomed  skiff,  and  one  of  them — presum 
ably  the  Irishman — made  a  remark  which  neither  I  nor  my 
neighbor  from  the  Siamese  Embassy  quite  caught.  The 
rest  of  the  speech  was  couched  in  a  serious  vein,  but  when  it 
was  over,  candor  compels  me  to  say  that  my  intellectual  ap 
petite  still  bothered  me. 

The  next  speaker  was  the  Ambassador  from  Tegucigalpa. 
He  made  me  think  of  a  volume  I  had  recently  picked  up  on 
the  Principal  Censor's  table.  It  was  called  "  Fifteen  Thou 
sand  Familiar  Phrases,"  and  the  Ambassador  from  Tegu 
cigalpa  used  approximately  13,500  of  them.  He  said  that  co 
operation  had  taken  the  place  of  competition ;  that  a  man  was 
a  man  for  all  that;  that  eternal  vigilance  was  the  price  of 
liberty;  that  under  no  conditions  would  2  and  2  make  any 
thing  but  4;  that  genius  was  the  capacity  for  taking  pains; 
that  Shakespeare  was  the  common  glory  of  mankind, 
whether  Christian  or  Moslem;  and  that  victory  was  only  a 
question  of  time.  At  this  point  he  was  reminded  of  a  col 
ored  uncle,  named  Ebenezer,  who  was  propelling  a  mule 
along  a  lonely  road  at  midnight.  When  the  laughter  had 
subsided  he  declared  that  he  knew  no  better  way  of  sum 
ming  up  the  status  between  the  two  countries  than  by  say 
ing  Nihtt  kumani,  unless  it  was  Labor  omnia  vincit. 

It  was  all  pleasant  enough,  but  not  quite  what  one  would 
call  intellectually  filling.  My  neighbor  from  the  Siamese 
Embassy  was  pulling  thoughtfully  at  a  fresh-lit  cigar,  and 
when  I  turned  to  him  for  sympathy  he  smiled  in  the  most 
eager  fashion  and  handed  me  the  matches.  I  just  had  time 
to  thank  him  before  the  President  of  the  Vaccination  Board 
got  to  his  feet. 


THE  AFTER-DINNER  SPEAKER        87 

The  President  of  the  Vaccination  Board  asserted,  without 
fear  of  contradiction,  that  the  world  was  smaller  to-day  than 
ever  before  and  that  science  had  done  its  share  in  bringing 
the  nations  closer  to  each  other.  For  conflict  we  were  sub 
stituting  cooperation;  treaties  had  no  validity  without  the 
ratification  of  mutual  good  will  and  understanding;  and 
whereas  Tegucigalpa  had  something  to  learn  from  Mesopo 
tamia,  it  was  an  open  secret  that  Mesopotamia  had  a  good 
deal  to  learn  from  Tegucigalpa.  It  reminded  him  of  the 
insurance  agent  who  intercepted  the  bridegroom  on  his  way 
to  church — 

It  needed  only  a  brief  exchange  of  glances  with  my  neigh 
bor  from  the  Siamese  Embassy,  and  under  cover  of  the 
laughter  and  applause  we  were  out  through  the  side  exit  and 
in  the  open.  We  walked  side  by  side  without  speaking  until 
we  reached  the  bank  of  the  Tigris  and  stopped  to  look 
thoughtfully  at  the  yellow  waters.  Then  bracing  myself 
to  the  question: 

"  It  bored  you?  "  I  said. 

He  looked  up  in  surprise. 

"  Bored,  M'sieu  Sinbad?     But,  no!  " 

"  There  was  about  the  speeches,"  I  said,  "  a  sameness,  a 
lack  of  relief,  a  sort  of  Shredded  Turnip  feeling  " — and  I 
waved  my  hands  as  I  imagined  they  do  in  the  best  foreign 
circles. 

"  At  the  contrary,"  he  said,  almost  somberly.  "  It  made 
one  to  remember,  painfully;  ah,  too  painfully."  And  then, 
as  I  showed  plainly  that  I  did  not  understand,  "  I  was  on 
the  staff  at  our  War  Office,  M'sieu  Sinbad,  for  one,  two 
years.  I  wrote  the  daily  bulletins." 


88  SINBAD 

"To  be  sure,"  I  said,  though  this  was  the  first  I  had 
heard  of  the  matter. 

"I  drafted  the  communiques  during  those  many,  many 
weeks  of  horror,"  he  went  on,  scarcely  addressing  me. 
"  When  we  were  beaten  back  with  very  great  slaughter  I 
wrote,  c  We  are  proceeding  in  accordance  with  prearranged 
plans  and  have  taken  prisoners.'  Later  I  said,  l  We  have 
succeeded  in  rectifying  our  lines.'  Later  I  wrote, '  South  of 
X.  the  enemy's  advance  guard  has  been  repulsed  with  great 
loss.'  But  X.  was  fifty  miles  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  posi 
tion  we  had  occupied  three  days  before.  Later  I  said, 
1  There  is  nothing  to  report.'  There  was  nothing,  indeed, 
which  one  had  the  heart  to  report.  It  seems  impossible 
that  one  could  have  lived  through  that  nightmare  and  writ 
ten,  as  I  did,  day  after  day.  Ah,  the  power  of  words,  Sin- 
bad,  to  say  all  or  nothing — I  was  reminded  to-night." 

I  put  my  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"  But  you  never,  in  your  communiques,  were  reminded  of 
the  Scotchman  who  lost  sixpence  in  Westminster  Abbey?  " 

He  seized  my  hand  in  both  his  own. 

"  Thank  you,  my  friend,"  he  said. 


STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE 
RENTING  AGENT 

AYESHA'S  telegram  was  about  apartments.  So  the 
Commander  of  the  Faithful  explained  when  I  read  to 
him  the  contents  of  the  utterly  unexpected  message  from 
Turkestan.  It  said:  "  Sinbad  Bagdad  two  bathrooms  near 
river  three  bedrooms  southern  exposure  eternally  grateful 
Ayesha  take  papa  he  knows  what  I  like." 

"  It's  this  way,  Sinbad,"  said  his  Majesty.  "  Young 
Hassan  Khan  is  coming  down  to  talk  over  war  matters,  es 
pecially  that  loan  of  one  hundred  million  sequins,  which  will 
take  some  time.  I  understand  one  of  the  members  of  the 
Chamber  of  Elders  has  already  given  notice  that  he  expects 
to  speak  fifty-four  hours  straight  on  the  loan  proposition. 
He  says  he  is  going  to  prove  that  if  a  man  started  counting 
sequins  at  the  time  of  the  birth  of  the  Prophet  with  an  hour 
off  for  lunch  and  dinner,  it  would  take  him  347  years  to 
count  one  hundred  million  sequins.  I  presume  it  would  take 
him  347  years  if  he  started  at  any  other  time,  but  that  isn't 
the  point.  Of  course,  Ayesha  is  coming  along;  and  she  de 
clines  to  stay  at  the  palace.  She  wrote  me  to  tell  you  to 
hunt  up  an  apartment  for  them.  Only  the  thing  slipped  my 
mind." 

"  Indispensable  One,"  I  said,  not  concealing  my  surprise 
and  concern,  "  surely  naught  has  arisen  between  your  Maj 
esty  and  the  Princess  Ayesha,  Allah  make  her  posterity  like 

89 


9o  SINBAD 

the  sands  of  the  desert,  aye,  like  the  submarine  sinkings 
when  five  zeros  are  added  by  mistake." 

"  Quite  the  contrary,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  The  child  writes 
that  Hassan  is  very  good  to  her  and  she  is  happy,  but  never 
theless  she  misses  me."  His  Majesty  paused  and  blew  his 
nose  violently.  "  Only  yesterday  she  sent  me  the  most 
charming  prayer  rug  imaginable,  genuine  Axminster,  and  a 
lotion  of  marvelous  efficacy  against  falling  hair,  made  of  un- 
fermented  mare's  milk  and  powdered  lapis  lazuli.  But  she 
says  she  would  rather  go  into  apartments  and  save  the  cost 
of  entertainment  which  her  sojourn  at  the  palace  would  in 
volve,  and  I  am  to  give  the  money  instead  to  the  Red 
Crescent." 

"  But  the  cost  of  the  apartment,  Majesty?  "  I  said. 

"  You  might  well  ask  that,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  Also  the 
cost  of  sending  up  several  vanloads  of  furniture  from  the 
palace  and  the  cost  of  a  troop  of  cavalry  to  keep  guard 
around  her  domicile.  But  I  never  did  have  a  good  head  for 
figures.  She  does  insist  on  a  reasonably  cheap  apartment, 
and  it  is  for  you  to  find  it,  Sinbad." 

"  And  your  Majesty  will  deign  to  accompany  me  in  the 
hunt,  even  as  Ayesha  requests?  " 

"  To  tell  the  truth,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  I  was  thinking  of 
running  out  to  the  links.  But  the  Minister  of  High  and 
Low  Finance  has  asked  for  a  three  hours'  audience  to  dis 
cuss  excess  profits.  So  I  think  I  will  go  with  you." 

The  Caliph  having  assumed  the  simple  dress  of  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Produce  Exchange,  we  made  our  way  to  the  booth 
of  a  house  agent  of  my  acquaintance  whose  previous  occu- 
patioe  had  been  writing  unrimed  poetry  for  the  public 


THE  RENTING  AGENT  91* 

sheets,  and  who  had  turned  to  his  present  calling  as  a  more 
favorable  outlet  for  his  highly  developed  gifts  of  the  im 
agination.  To  him  I  stated  concisely  the  nature  of  our  re 
quirements. 

"  The  combination  of  three  bedchambers  and  two  bath 
rooms  is  quite  unusual,"  he  said.  "  Now,  if  you  had  said 
one  bedchamber  and  three  bathrooms,  it  would  be  much 
easier.  Of  course,  one  might,  without  excessive  outlay, 
convert  either  the  kitchen  or  the  living-room  into  a  bath 
room." 

"  Kindly  stick  to  specifications,"  said  the  Caliph,  with  a 
toucb  of  temper  and  authority  that  belied  his  simple  bour 
geois  dress,  so  that  I  had  to  lay  an  admonitory  hand  upon 
his  sleeve.  "  And  it  must  be  near  the  Tigris,"  I  said  hastily 
to  the  free-verse  writer,  in  order  to  divert  his  attention. 

"  Do  you  want  to  see  the  river  or  hear  it?  "  said  the  house 
agent. 

"Why  not  both?  "I  said. 

"  Because  the  combination  is  very  rare,"  he  replied.  "  I 
have  in  mind  one  apartment  from  the  kitchen  window  of 
which  there  is  an  excellent  outlook  upon  the  river  and  the 
Bridge  of  Boats.  But  it's  thirteen  stories  up  with  as  many 
intervening  pianos.  And  there  is  another  where  the  soft 
lap  of  the  waters  and  the  cries  of  the  boatmen  come  up  de 
lightfully  from  around  the  corner,  but  the  outlook  is  upon  a 
moving-picture  theater.  However,  let  us  go  and  see." 

Having  said  this,  he  rose,  donned  his  kaftan,  locked  the 
door  of  the  booth,  and  hung  upon  it  a  sign  which  said, 
"  Will  return  immediately."  I  reminded  him  that  our  busi 
ness  might  hold  him  for  several  hours. 


92  SINBAD 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right,"  he  said,  and  we  started  off.  But 
we  had  not  walked  far  before  he  turned  around. 

"  Now,  as  to  the  front  entrance,"  he  said.  "  Do  you  like 
Hindu  Renaissance  with  elephants  and  the  Goddess  Kali, 
or  would  you  prefer  something  in  Early  Chinese  with 
dragons  and  a  pagoda?  " 

"  Is  there  any  essential  difference?  "  asked  the  Caliph. 

"  There  is  three  times  as  much  carving  in  the  Hindu,  and 
it  naturally  comes  higher,"  said  the  house  agent.  "Per 
sonally  I  prefer  the  primitive  blues  and  reds  of  the  Chinese." 
There,  I  thought,  spoke  the  poet. 

But  when  we  drew  up  before  a  magnificent  doorway  thir 
ty-six  feet  high,  with  palm  trees  in  tubs  on  either  side,  "  Per 
haps  this  will  suit  you  best,"  said  the  house  agent.  "  It's 
our  latest  composite  housekeeping  style,  with  central  refrig 
eration.  You  see  how  the  architect  has  combined  the 
Hindu  with  the  Chinese  and  thrown  in  just  a  touch  of  the 
Late  Kamchatka." 

The  Caliph  stared  in  awe  at  the  monumental  facade. 

"  Now,  by  Allah,"  he  said,  "  who  of  my — who  of  his  Maj 
esty's  subjects  can  afford  to  dwell  in  such  regal  luxury?  " 

"  Nobody  can,"  said  the  house  agent,  "  but  there  is  only 
one  apartment  vacant." 

Inside  we  were  taken  in  charge  by  the  Second  Deputy 
Administrator  and  were  rapidly  lifted  to  the  eleventh  floor 
in  a  car  manipulated  by  a  young  woman  in  simple  crimson 
and  gold. 

"  That  would  be  the  effects  of  the  war,"  said  the  Caliph, 
half  aloud.  "  It  must  be  a  monotonous  life  for  a  woman." 

"  Yet  it  is  a  step  away  from  the  confinement  of  the  home 


THE  RENTING  AGENT  93 

and  towards  freedom,"  said  the  house  agent,  whom  I  knew 
for  a  poet,  but  now  began  to  suspect  also  for  a  cynic. 

The  Second  Deputy  Administrator  threw  open  the  door 
of  an  apartment  and  cautioned  us  to  be  careful  of  a  sudden 
corner  in  the  hall.  "  This  gets  plenty  of  light  during  the 
summer  solstice  and  shortly  before  the  spring  equinox,"  he 
said.  "At  other  times  we  use  electricity.  There  are  six 
rooms  altogether,  and  this  self-contained  suite  of  four  rooms 
is  the  haremlik." 

"  But  why  four  rooms  out  of  the  six  for  the  women?  " 
asked  the  Caliph. 

The  Second  Deputy  Administrator  looked  at  him  with  a 
faint  touch  of  pity,  and  the  Caliph's  beard  began  to  vibrate. 
I  intervened  hastily. 

"The  prospective  tenant  is  a  good  Moslem,  yet  he  has 
but  one  wife,"  I  said. 

The  Second  Deputy  Assistant  looked  dubious. 

"  In  that  case,"  he  said,  "  we  should  require  unexception 
able  financial  references.  Now,  Abdul  Malek,  across  the 
hall,  has  four  wives,  and  I  believe  he  is  considering  a  fifth." 

"  It  would  be  noisy  with  so  many  children  about,"  I  said. 

He  looked  at  us  with  frank  astonishment. 

"  There  are  no  children,"  he  said. 


STORY  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  CENSOR  AND 
THE  ULCERATED  BICUSPID 

ABOVE  the  din  of  a  world  war  the  normal  demands  of 
life  clamor  to  be  heard.  Take  the  toothache,  for  in 
stance. 

I  was  strolling  the  other  afternoon  in  one  of  the  quiet 
streets  that  lie  behind  the  Grand  Bazaar  when  I  grew  aware 
of  a  familiar  form  moving  feebly  some  paces  in  front  of  me 
and  hugging  close  the  shadow  of  the  garden  walls.  It  was 
the  Principal  Censor,  whose  absence  from  his  duties  for  sev 
eral  days  I  had  wondered  at. 

Hastening  after  him,  "  Hail,  oh  Hajji  Ali,"  I  said,  "  and 
may  Allah  grant  you  all  the  comfort  attainable  under  the 
present  extraordinary  conditions  of  humidity.  All  is  well?  " 

The  Principal  Censor  glanced  at  me  sideways  and  up 
ward. 

"  Ugh,  ugh,"  he  said. 

"  You  have  been  out  of  town?  "  I  queried,  somewhat  pu& 
zled  by  his  brevity. 

"  Mum,  mum,"  he  replied,  and  shook  his  head.  Then, 
with  a  start,  "  Forgive  me,  Sinbad,"  he  said,  "  but  I  speak 
out  of  force  of  habit.  Even  now  I  come  from  the  dentist. 
It  is  his  custom  of  conversation  to  ask  questions  that  call 
for  a  somewhat  detailed  reply  and  immediately  thereupon 
to  thrust  a  cotton  wad  into  your  mouth.  Under  the  circum 
stances,  you  either  reply, '  Ugh,  ugh/  or  '  Mum,  mum.'  " 

94 


THE  ULCERATED  BICUSPID          95 

And  to  be  sure,  as  I  looked  close,  I  saw  that  the  side  of 
the  Principal  Censor's  face  which  he  kept  concealed  in  the 
shadow  of  the  wall  was  even  like  the  full  moon  of  Ramadan, 
whereas  the  opposite  cheek  suggested  a  consumptive  maiden 
by  Botticelli. 

"  Believe  me  infinitely  prostrated,  Hajji  Ali,"  I  cried. 

"  Not  at  all,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  There's  no  pain  what 
ever;  it's  the  confounded  look  of  the  thing." 

"  But  how  came  it  about?  " 

"  Who  shall  say?  "  he  replied  cheerfully.  "  Overwork, 
perhaps." 

"  Surely,  you  don't  bite  things  out  of  the  dispatches,"  I 
jested  feebly. 

He  was  good  enough  to  laugh.  "  No,  but  it's  wearing  on 
the  nerves;  a  cold  draft  of  air,  and  there  you  are.  I  am 
really  much  better." 

"  And  who  has  been  doing  your  work  in  the  meanwhile?  " 

"  That  was  quite  a  problem,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  At  first 
I  divided  it  between  the  Embargo  Board  and  the  Bureau  of 
Latitude  and  Longitude.  But  they  fell  out  and  quarreled. 
So  I  hit  upon  the  plan  of  publishing  everything  just  as  it 
came  over  the  wires,  marking  it  '  Passed  by  the  Censor.' 
Naturally  nobody  believed  what  they  read.  I  flatter  my 
self  it  was  a  happy  idea." 

Suddenly  his  face  darkened. 

"  I  fear  complications,  Sinbad.  I  admire  Al  Firuzd  as  a 
man  and  have  little  to  say  against  him  as  a  dentist;  but  his 
manner  of  conducting  conversation  opens  the  way  to  misun 
derstandings.  There  will  be  rumors  afloat,  and  if  they 
should  come  to  the  ear  of  the  Caliph,  it  might  be  unpleas- 


96  SINBAD 

ant.    Do  you  mind  walking  on  the  other  side  of  me  as  we 
cross  the  street?  " 

I  was  glad  to  do  what  I  could  to  camouflage  that  full 
blown  left  jaw,  and  as  we  walked  he  explained.  It  seems 
that  after  three  days  of  intermittent  rheumatic  disturbances 
and  loss  of  sleep,  his  condition  obtruded  itself  on  the  atten 
tion  of  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful. 

"What  is  wrong  with  you,  P.  C.?  "  said  the  Caliph. 
"Here  are  no  less  than  two  paragraphs  and  several  rows 
of  figures  which  ordinarily  you  would  have  deleted  like  a 
shot." 

Thereupon  the  Principal  Censor  confessed. 

"  Drop  your  work  at  once  and  go  over  to  see  Al  Firuzd," 
said  the  Caliph.  "  Never  mind  if  the  enemy  finds  out  a  thing 
or  two  in  your  absence." 

When  Hajji  Ali  was  seated  in  the  dentist's  chair,  Al 
Firuzd  tilted  back  his  patient's  head  and  said:;  "  Where 
does  it  hurt?  " 

"  Here,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  and  drew  a  line  from 
his  ear  to  his  chin  and  up  again  to  the  root  of  his  nose. 

Al  Firuzd  showed  just  a  trace  of  irritation. 

"Are  you  speaking  now  as  a  censor  or  as  a  patient?  " 
he  said. 

"  As  the  latter,"  'said  Hajji  Ali. 

"  Then  don't  try  to  suppress  information;  specify,  please." 
But  as  the  Principal  Censor  made  attempt  to  comply: 
"  Open  your  mouth,"  said  Al  Firuzd,  and  with  the  blunt  end 
of  his  probe  he  tapped,  kindly,  but  firmly. 

"  Ugh,  ugh;"  said  the  Principal  Censor. 


THE  ULCERATED  BICUSPID          97 

"  Right  you  are/'  said  Al  Firuzd,  and  picked  up  his  ex 
ploring  needle. 

"  Did  that  hurt?  "  he  asked,  after  a  while. 

"  Quite  a  bit." 

"  I  was  confident  it  would,"  said  Al  Firuzd. 

"  Then  why,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  with  the  sug 
gestion  of  tears  in  his  eyes,  "  could  you  not  have  taken  it 
for  granted?  " 

But  Al  Firuzd  turned  to  his  instrument  desk  and  busied 
himself  with  needles  and  little  bottles  of  dark  fluid,  hum 
ming  to  himself  gently. 

"  I've  located  the  trouble,"  he  said.  "It's  the  third  max 
illary  phalange  of  the  second  intercostal  bicuspid."  "  And, 
do  you  know,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  "  after 
long  concentration  upon  the  subject-matter  of  a  censor's 
business  it  was  pleasant  to  hear  something  so  beautifully 
definite." 

At  any  rate:  "  Do  you  know  what,  Hajji  AH?  "  said  the 
dentist.  "  Three  months  from  now  there  won't  be  a  single 
Madagascar  submarine  left  in  the  seven  seas,  and  six  months 
from  now  there  will  be  peace,  on  our  own  terms.  We  out 
number  them  now  three  to  one  in  men  and  five  to  one  in 
guns." 

"  My  own  opinion,  Al  Firuzd,"  said  the  Principal  Censor, 
"  is  that—" 

"Open  your  mouth,  please.  That's  it."  Al  Firuzd  in 
serted  a  cylinder  of  absorbent  cotton  under  the  upper  lip, 
held  up  his  mirror,  studied  it  carefully  and  said: 

"  The  food  shortage  in  Madagascar  is  acute.    There  are 


98  SINBAD 

riots  everywhere.  Before  winter  the  country  will  be  in  full 
revolt.  What  do  you  imagine  the  Government  of  Madagas 
car  will  do  then?  " 

"  Ugh,  ugh,"  said  the  Principal  Censor. 

Al  Firuzd  worked  upon  him  for  the  space  of  five  minutes, 
removed  the  cotton  wadding,  and  instructed  him  to  rinse  his 
mouth. 

"  Of  course,"  said  the  dentist,  "  we  shall  insist  on  com 
plete  reparation.  For  Italy  we  shall  insist  on  Trieste,  the 
Trentino,  and  the  Adriatic  coast  line — " 

"  We  certainly  shall — "  said  the  Principal  Censor. 

"  Open  your  mouth,  please,"  said  Al  Firuzd. 

It  was  manifestly  unfair,  complained  the  Principal  Cen 
sor.  "  I  leave  it  to  you,  Sinbad,  whether  it  is  right  to  sup 
press  or  distort  a  man's  words  like  that.  What  I  was  going 
to  say  in  reply  to  his  statement  of  Italy's  claims,  of  course, 
was,  c  We  certainly  shall  not!  but  he  cut  me  off  before  the 
'  not.'  And  now  Al  Firuzd  goes  about  and  vapors  about  the 
war,  and  quotes  me  as  his  authority.  Only  yesterday  he  was 
telling  Abu  Hassan,  chief  auditor  in  the  Department  of  Odds 
and  Ends,  that  we  have  two  million  men  in  port  ready  to 
sail.  He  said  that  he  had  made  that  statement  in  my  pres 
ence  and  I  had  not  contradicted  it.  How  could  I?  He  had 
a  pound  of  cotton  and  iodine  in  my  mouth.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  did  my  best.  I  said,  '  Ugh,  ugh,'  and  waved  my 
hands,  but  all  he  said  was,  l  It'll  be  over  in  a  minute.'  It 
isn't  fair,  it  isn't  fair,  Sinbad." 

Just  then  a  crowd  of  young  girls  passed  by,  and  the  Prin 
cipal  Censor  opened  his  newspaper  hurriedly  and  buried  his 


THE  ULCERATED  BICUSPID          99 

face  in  the  advertisements.  But  when  we  were  once  more 
in  a  deserted  byway  he  returned  to  his  grievance. 

"  Not  that  it  makes  any  difference  with  Al  Firuzd  if  you 
seize  your  chance  and  speak  out.  I  did  so  on  one  occasion. 
He  had  been  wondering  how  long  it  would  take  to  send  our 
army  across  the  sea.  I  looked  up  into  his  pleasant,  thought 
ful  countenance,  warmed  to  the  kindly  gleam  in  his  eye,  and, 
my  mouth  being  free  by  chance,  said:  '  Al  Firuzd,  we  have 
456  transports  with  a  carrying  capacity  of  347,685  men  and 
their  equipment.'  It  was  a  secret  for  which  the  editor  of 
the  Buzzer  would  have  given  a  year  of  his  life.  But  Al 
Firuzd  smiled  down  at  me  and  said: 

" '  Open  your  mouth,  please.'  " 


STORY  OF  THE  CONGESTED  WAR  WORKERS 

FROM  no  less  a  source  than  the  Caliph  himself  I  gather 
that  unless  traffic  congestion  in  the  capital  is  imme 
diately  relieved  the  whole  conduct  of  the  war  will  come  to 
a  stop.  It  is  impossible  for  the  regular  members  of  the  Gov 
ernment  to  move  about  the  streets,  the  bazaars,  and  the 
public  offices  because  of  the  influx  of  Men  on  the  Spot. 
.Their  number  has  been  estimated  by  the  Bureau  of  Statis 
tics  and  Elaboration  at  something  like  a  quarter  of  a  mil 
lion.  About  two-thirds  of  these,  roughly,  have  come  down 
to  find  out  for  themselves  how  the  Government  is  running 
the  war,  and  the  rest  are  here  to  tell  the  Government  how 
to  run  it. 

Only  this  morning  I  was  accosted  by  a  stranger  who  de 
scribed  himself  as  special  correspondent  for  the  Ctesiphon 
Morning  Glory.  He  arrived  in  town  the  night  before.  He 
said  there  was  only  one  way  of  dealing  effectively  with  the 
Madagascar  submarines.  You  must  stretch  one  chain  of 
electric  contact  nets  between  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and 
the  mouth  of  the  Red  Sea,  another  chain  from  Ceylon  to 
New  Guinea,  and  patrol  the  rest  of  the  Indian  Ocean  with 
wooden  submarine  chasers  equipped  with  triple  expansion 
oil-burning  turbines.  He  then  asked  me  the  way  to  his 
hotel  at  the  corner  of  Fatima  Road  and  the  Street  of  the 
Obstreperous  Camel,  saying  that  he  had  lost  his  way  no  less 
than  seven  times  since  ten  o'clock  last  night. 

100 


CONGESTED  WAR  WORKERS       ibi 

On  the  other  hand  there  are  special  correspondents'  in 
I  town  who  have  been  more  fortunate.  One  such,  with  whom 
I  made  acquaintance  over  a  simple  meal  of  fig  paste  and 
curds  at  the  eatinghouse  of  a  Thousand  Glazed  Tiles,  told 
me  that  he  was  about  to  set  out  on  his  return  trip  of  three 
weeks  by  mule-back  to  the  Kashgar  Mountains  after  a  very 
profitable  study  of  the  war  at  close  quarters.  He  had  inter 
viewed  everybody  worth  while,  and  never  failed  to  secure 
the  "  inside  hashish,"  which  is  a  popular  phrase  for  secret 
and  reliable  information.  The  Minister  of  the  Navy,  the 
Minister  of  Coordination,  the  Minister  of  High  and  Low 
Finance  and  the  Chief  Secretary  of  Wear  and  Tear  told 
him,  in  confidence,  that  the  country  was  united  and  enthu 
siastic  for  the  war,  that  the  army  and  the  navy  were  ready 
for  any  task  that  might  be  assigned  to  them,  that  the  sup 
port  of  Allah  was  assured,  and  that  the  struggle  would  be 
carried  to  a  definite  and  triumphant  conclusion  in  accord 
ance  with  prearranged  plans.  "  Six  weeks  on  mule-back," 
said  the  stranger,  "  is  quite  a  job,  but  it  was  worth  it." 

I  narrated  this  incident  to  the  Commander  of  the  Faith 
ful,  and  he  smiled  grimly.  I  found  his  Majesty  on  the  top 
of  the  Tower  of  Abu  Bekr,  which  is,  as  you  know,  the  high 
est  structure  in  Bagdad,  being  600  cubits  high  and  dedicated 
in  normal  times  to  bridal  couples  on  their  honeymoon. 

"  I  have  come  hither,  oh  Sinbad,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  for 
the  purpose  of  obtaining  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  war.  It  is 
either  that  or  running  off  to  the  Baluchistan  hills  for  the 
necessary  quiet.  As  you  see,  it  is  comparatively  secluded 
here.  It  is  true  that  half-way  up  the  Tower  I  was  inter 
cepted  by  a  special  correspondent  from  the  Caspian  Sea, 


702          ,  SINBAD 

who  prostrated  himself  and  cried,  (  Sire,  how  about  the  mil 
let  and  barley  supply,  and  what  are  the  chances  of  Russia 
making  a  separate  peace?  '  I  answered  the  poor  wretch  in 
the  affirmative  and  made  my  way  up.  At  the  next  turn  I 
was  stopped  by  a  visitor  from  the  coast  of  Coromandel,  who 
stood  on  his  hands,  rolled  his  eyes,  and  cried, '  Sire,  get  busy 
in  the  name  of  Allah!  '  Still,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  restful 
compared  with  conditions  at  the  palace.  They  are  four 
thick  under  the  windows  down  there." 

"  Forgive  them,  oh  Altitudinous  One,"  I  said.  "  It  is  but 
natural  that  they  should  wish  to  see  and  learn  for  them 
selves." 

"  I  am  not  blaming  them,  Sinbad,"  said  his  Majesty.  "  My 
subjects  are  entitled  to  know  what  we  are  doing,  and  particu 
larly  in  such  instances  where  we  do  not  quite  know  our 
selves." 

Now  the  strange  part  of  it  all  is  this:  while  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  earnest  investigators  are  flocking  to  Bagdad 
to  find  out  how  the  war  is  going  on,  a  great  many  of  the 
people  permanently  here  on  the  ground  are  turning  their 
gaze  back  home  in  order  to  discover  just  where  they  stand. 
I  was  in  conversation  the  other  day  with  two  prominent 
members  of  the  House  of  Elders,  of  whom  one  holds  the 
long-distance  record  for  debate  in  that  House  after  speaking 
sixty-two  consecutive  hours  on  no  less  than  thirteen  differ 
ent  subjects  on  two  sandwiches  of  goat's  cheese  and  a  glass 
of  milk.  I  inquired  of  these  statesmen  how  they  would  vote 
on  the  pending  measure  for  the  construction  of  40,000  aero 
planes. 


CONGESTED  WAR  WORKERS       103 

"  Public  opinion  in  my  province  is  solid  for  the  aero 
planes,"  said  the  long-distance  Elder.  "  I  have  here  no  less 
than  4,400  telegrams  declaring  that  the  aeroplanes  are  es 
sential  to  victory." 

"  On  the  other  hand,"  said  the  second  Elder,  "  I  have 
here  6,100  telegrams  insisting  that  I  vote  against  the  aero 
planes  and  in  favor  of  the  wooden  submarine-chasers." 

"That  is  extraordinary  unanimity  in  both  cases,"  I  re 
marked. 

"  Unanimity  isn't  the  word,"  said  the  first  Elder.  "  All 
my  4,400  telegrams  agree  in  denouncing  what  they  call 
'  fatal  delay  on  a  vital  issue.'  Now  how  did  they  all  happen 
to  think  of  that  phrase?  " 

"Every  one  of  my  6,100  telegrams,"  said  the  second 
Elder,  "  addressed  me  as  Hassan  ben  Ali  instead  of  Abu  ben 
AH,  which  is  my  right  name.  Now  how  did  they  all  hap 
pen  to  make  the  same  error?  " 

"  Public  opinion  is  a  wondrous  thing,"  I  said. 

"  It  is,"  sighed  the  Elders.    But  this  is  beside  the  point. 

It  is  this  second  Elder,  by  the  way,  who  has  been  a  pro 
lific  source  for  most  of  the  first-hand  information  that  goes 
out  of  Bagdad.  Whenever  old  Abu  in  the  course  of  his  mis 
cellaneous  reading  happens  to  stumble  across  something  that 
strikes  his  fancy  he  reads  it  into  the  House  Record.  There 
by  it  becomes  Government  information  and  is  extensively 
quoted.  It  may  be  a  bit  of  homely  poetry  or  a  recipe  for 
preserving  figs  or  a  description  of  sunset  on  the  ruins  of 
Nineveh;  it  all  goes  in. 

Now,  as  the  Caliph  and  I  were  making  our  descent  from 


104  SINBAD 

the  Tower  of  Abu  Bekr,  out  of  the  dusk  there  leaped  a  fig 
ure  in  a  bathing-suit  with  a  notebook,  for  it  is  warm  in 
Bagdad. 

"  Enlightened  One,"  came  a  voice  from  the  bathing-suit, 
"how  and  when  will  the  war  end?  " 

The  Caliph  answered  gravely: 

"  Son,  the  war  will  end  through  starvation  in  about  three 
months,  if  special  correspondents  continue  to  flock  into  Bag 
dad  at  the  present  rate.  The  famine-stricken  natives  of  this 
city  will  rise  and  compel  me  to  make  peace  on  the  enemy's 
terms." 


STORY  OF  WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR 

AYESHA  and  her  husband  did  not  go  into  apartments, 
after  all.  At  the  last  moment  she  decided  that  by 
going  to  live  with  her  father  in  the  palace  there  would  be 
that  many  taxi  fares  saved,  which  she  would  give  to  the 
Red  Crescent.  The  royal  residence  being  heavily  congested 
with  an  overflow  of  bureaus  and  departments  from  the  Army 
and  Navy  Building,  it  seemed  at  first  as  if  no  adequate 
quarters  could  be  obtained  for  the  visitors.  His  Majesty 
was  finally  compelled  to  issue  an  edict  abolishing  the  Bureau 
of  Analytical  Geometry,  with  the  result  that  the  young 
Khan  and  his  wife  were  soon  comfortably  installed,  and  the 
war  went  on,  if  anything,  a  little  better  than  ever. 

Thither  his  Majesty,  accompanied  by  the  present  writer, 
was  in  the  habit  of  repairing  at  odd  hours  for  a  quiet  chat 
with  his  son-in-law,  of  whom  he  was  exceeding  fond.  Aye- 
sha  we  saw  rarely.  The  second  day  after  her  arrival  in  Bag 
dad  she  joined  the  local  branch  of  the  National  Mesopo- 
tamian  Union  for  the  Enactment  of  Direct,  Equal,  Single, 
Proportional,  and  Compulsory  Suffrage  by  Imperial  Legis 
lation  (briefly  known  as  the  N.  M.  U.  E.  D.  E.  S.  P.  C.  S. 
I.  L.).  The  next  day  she  began  a  campaign  for  the  revi 
sion  of  the  by-laws  and  simultaneously  took  the  first  steps 
towards  organizing  a  Relief  Bazaar.  After  that  she  discov 
ered  that  she  must  have  some  new  clothes. 

We  entered  one  afternoon,  the  Caliph  and  I,  the  apart- 

105 


106  SINBAD 

ments  of  the  visitors  from  Turkestan  and  found  the  young 
Khan  on  a  divan  in  the  darkest  corner  of  the  room  with  his 
head  in  his  hands. 

"  The  peace  of  the  Prophet  with  you,  oh,  Hassan,"  said 
the  Caliph.  "  Is  it  the  war  that  troubles  your  spirits,  or  are 
you  lonely  for  Ayesha?  " 

The  young  Khan  put  his  finger  to  his  lips  and  pointed  to 
the  curtains  that  covered  the  doorway,  but  before  he  could 
speak  Ayesha's  voice  came  from  behind  the  curtains :  "  Is 
^hat  you,  papa?  " 

"  Even  so,  daughter,'7  replied  the  Caliph. 

"  Don't  go  before  I  see  you,"  she  said.  "  I  will  be  through 
in  a  moment." 

A  wan  smile  lit  up  the  countenance  of  the  young  Khan 
as  he  rose  to  surrender  his  seat  to  the  royal  visitor. 

"  The  dressmaker  is  in  there,  and  they  are  trying  on 
things,"  he  said.  "  She  came  at  high  noon.  It  is  now  half 
an  hour  to  sunset." 

The  Caliph  lifted  the  stem  of  the  narghili  to  his  mouth, 
inhaled  once  or  twice,  and  shook  his  head  in  compassion. 

"  I  know,  son,  I  know,"  he  said.  "  I,  too,  suffered  until 
I  married  my  seventh  wife.  Now  I  order  from  Paris  in  car 
lots,  and  it  doesn't  worry  me  in  the  least." 

"  Know  you  what,  oh,  One  among  Fathers-in-Law,"  said 
the  young  Khan.  "  I  am  no  longer  puzzled  by  the  ques 
tion  whether  woman  can  ever  take  up  the  hardships  of 
actual  warfare.  I  am  convinced  that  any  woman  in  Bag 
dad  can  stand  up  in  a  trench  forty-eight  hours  at  a  stretch, 
provided  she  can  have  another  woman  kneeling  before  her 
with  a  mouthful  of  pins." 


WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR  107 

"  Now,  by  the  beard  of  the  Chairman  of  the  Rivers  and 
Harbors  Committee,  you  have  spoken  the  truth,  Hassan," 
said  the  Caliph.  "  Only  you  must  not  take  it  so  hard. 
Ayesha  will  grow  older  and  you  will  grow  wiser  and  the 
thing  will  adjust  itself." 

"I  am  not  complaining;  I  am  merely  puzzled,"  said  the 
young  Khan.  "  This  business  of  women  and  clothes  is  not 
a  frivolity,  seeing  that  they  give  of  their  strength  and  their 
nerves  to  it ;  and  yet  there  are  knitting-bags." 

"  Knitting-bags?  "  I  queried. 

"  To  carry  sweaters  and  socks  which  you  are  knitting  for 
the  soldiers.  Give  ear,  oh  Sinbad.  This  is  from  the  fash 
ion  page  of  the  Bagdad  Buzzer"  And  he  read: 

" c  There  are  knitting-bags  of  the  most  expensive  of  ma 
terials.  A  black  satin  one  has  a  medallion  of  blue  Chinese 
embroidery  appliqued  conspicuously  on  its  side.  One  of 
black  and  gold  brocade  has  its  rings  wound  with  gold  galloon 
and  is  adorned  with  tassels  of  gold.  A  silk  one  is  made  from 
a  Poiret  print  colored  the  gayest  of  red  and  blue  and  white. 
There  are  bags  of  lace  and  ribbon  as  accompaniments  for 
evening  and  boudoir  gowns.  There  are  also  tailored  ones 
of  velvet  and  duvetyn;  also  those  with  bright  silver  and 
enameled  tops  for  knitting-needles.'  Now,  what  does  that 
sound  like  to  you?  " 

"  It  sounds,"  I  said,  "  like  a  possible  quotation  from  a 
speech  on  the  Army  Appropriation  bill." 

But  the  young  Khan  had  no  ears  for  me. 

"  Imagine,"  he  said  bitterly,  but  in  a  low  voice,  with  one 
eye  on  the  curtains,  "  what  would  happen  to  democracy 
and  self-determination  if  there  wasn't  an  embroidered 


io8  SINBAD 

blue  Chinese  medallion  appliqued  on  the  side.  Imagine  one 
of  our  Mesopotamian  boys  going  over  the  top  without  a 
sweater  from  a  velvet  and  duvetyn  knitting-bag.  Imagine 
what  would  happen  to  open  diplomacy  if  Ayesha  were 
to  start  out  for  the  opera  and  forget  her  ribbon  and  lace 
knitting-bag  with  a  pair  of  half-finished  socks  in  it.  Why 
is  it,  Father-in-Law?  Why  must  Ayesha,  with  youth,  ro 
mance,  courage,  humor,  and  vision,  be  unable  to  face  life 
without  gold  galloon  and  an  enameled  top?  " 

The  Caliph,  continuing  to  puff  at  his  pipe  and  stare 
straight  ahead  without  evincing  a  desire  to  speak,  I  ventured 
to  remark:  "  I  have  read,  oh  Excellent  Prince,  that  among 
the  birds  it  is  the  other  way  about;  for  it  is  the  male  who 
is  adorned  with  the  gayest  of  plumage,  while  the  female 
wears  the  sober  garb.  I  have  been  through  the  School  of 
Journalism,  and  I  know  my  entomology." 

But  the  young  Khan  spoke  dryly:  "  I  haven't  noticed 
much  change  in  bird  fashions  for  several  thousand  years; 
have  you?  The  patterns  seem  to  be  pretty  constant." 

"  Nevertheless,"  I  said,  nettled,  I  confess,  by  the  young 
Khan's  superior  manner,  "  the  male  instinct  for  gay  colors 
persists.  Even  now  I  will  confess — " 

"Now,  don't  tell  me,  Sinbad,  that  you  have  a  weakness 
in  that  direction,"  said  the  Caliph,  with  a  peculiar  glint  in 
his  eye. 

"Illustrious  One,"  I  said,  "at  all  times  the  sight  of  a 
red  necktie  in  a  bazaar  window  threatens  to  sweep  me  from 
my  moral  foundations." 

"  I  didn't  mean  to  hurt  your  feelings,  Sinbad,"  said  the 
young  Khan  with  right  royal  kindliness,  "  but  the  point  I 


WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR  109 

have  been  trying  to  make  is  not  that  women's  clothes  are 
so  frivolously  gay,  but  that  they  are  so  frivolously  change 
able.  We  men  get  used  to  our  clothes  and  like  them. 
When  they  get  used  to  their  clothes,  it  means  that  they 
can't  stand  them  any  longer,  but  must  have  new  ones  im 
mediately.  See  now  what  they  lose  in  life — the  ineffable 
companionship  of  an  old  turban  which  becomes  like  a  part 
of  you,  a  worn  girdle  whose  every  thread  calls  you  brother, 
the  solace  of  an  old  pair  of  slippers.  I  have  noticed  that 
as  soon  as  I  think  Ayesha  is  beginning  to  look  comfortable 
in  one  of  her  gowns,  she  calls  it  dowdy.  Why?  " 

"  Now  that  your  Excellency  speaks  of  it,"  I  said,  "  it  is 
my  opinion  that  the  reason  is  the  persistence  of  polygamous 
instincts  in  women." 

They  both  stared  at  me,  and  I  should  have  been  unspeak 
ably  grateful  if  at  that  moment  the  Principal  Censor  had 
appeared  through  the  ceiling  and  suppressed  me.  But  it 
was  too  late  to  withdraw. 

"What  I  mean  is  the  need  for  change,  renewal,  trans 
ferred  self-expression,  Freud- Jung,  you  know,  and  that  sort 
of  thing,"  I  stammered. 

The  Caliph  whistled. 

"  You  are  a  biologist,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  But  it  was  Aye 
sha  who  really  cleared  up  the  matter  for  us  as  soon  as  she 
came  in. 


STORY  OF  WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR 

(Continued) 

IT  was  well  on  towards  the  hour  of  the  evening  prayer 
when  the  Princess  Ayesha,  having  dismissed  her  dress 
maker,  joined  us  in  the  great  hall.     To  her  the  Caliph, 
fondly  drawing  her  to  himself,  expounded  in  a  few  well- 
chosen  words  the  subject  of  our  discourse. 

"  Why  is  it,  daughter,"  he  said,  "  that  this  sudden  onset 
called  Style  seizes  at  regular  intervals  upon  all  the  women 
in  my  realm  and  causes  them  to  array  themselves  in  gar 
ments  of  exactly  the  same  tint  cut  on  precisely  the  same 
lines?  " 

"  It  is  very  simple,  papa,"  said  Ayesha.  "  It  is  because 
we  are  trying  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy."  And 
as  the  three  of  us  gazed  at  her  without  comprehending, 
"  Hassan,  dear,"  she  said,  "  I  have  a  splitting  headache. 
Couldn't  we  have  some  coffee?  " 

It  was  some  time  before,  in  response  to  the  young  Khan's 
vigorous  handclap,  the  serving-maid  appeared,  her  agile 
fingers  whirling  a  pair  of  knitting-needles  through  the  in 
tricate  web  of  a  soldier's  mitten  even  while  she  prostrated 
herself  and  waited  for  orders.  But  when  the  coffee  was 
brought  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  lifted  the  tiny 
square  of  sugar  from  his  saucer  and  looked  inquiringly  at  his 
daughter. 

no 


WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR  1 1 1 

"  Your  hospitality  is  meager,  Ayesha,"  he  said. 

"  That  is  as  much  as  the  Sugar  and  Pomegranate  Jam  Ad 
ministrator  will  allow  to  a  cup,  papa,"  she  replied. 

"  But  surely  in  exceptional  cases?  " 

"  It  is  for  us  to  set  the  example.  Hassan  takes  his  coffee 
straight,"  she  explained  as  she  helped  herself  to  her  hus 
band's  bit  of  sugar,  which,  after  the  Oriental  fashion,  she 
nibbled  at  as  she  sipped. 

"  You  were  speaking  about  democracy,"  said  the  young 
Prince,  who,  like  his  celebrated  ancestor,  Genghis  Khan, 
would  never  drop  a  topic  until  he  had  exhausted  it. 

"  It  is  quite  simple,"  said  Ayesha,  dipping  into  a  five- 
pound  bonbon  box  which  she  drew  from  beneath  the  cush 
ions  of  the  divan.  "  When  all  of  us  simultaneously  go  in 
for  blue,  or  cerise,  or  mustard,  this  is  what  happens.  You 
men  happen  to  see  a  pretty  face  in  blue,  or  cerise,  or  mus 
tard  " — and  here  she  addressed  herself  to  me,  to  my  infinite 
embarrassment — "  and  thereafter  when  you  see  a  blue  or 
cerise  or  mustard  you  at  once  assume  a  pretty  face;  and 
closer  observation  fails  to  undeceive  you.  This  is  very  for 
tunate  for  the  homely  girl.  For  how  many  men  are  there, 
oh  Sinbad,  who  can  use  their  eyes  for  themselves?  " 

"  Highness,"  I  replied,  "  before  I  was  a  foreign  corre 
spondent  I  was  a  war  expert,  and  before  that  I  frequently 
helped  out  on  the  Woman's  Page,  and  it  is  even  as  you 
say." 

"  Don't  you  see,  then?  "  said  Ayesha,  quite  carried  away 
by  the  sweep  of  her  own  argument.  "  The  sight  of  the  first 
attractive  young  woman  in  a  blue  gown  establishes  in  the 
masculine  mind  a  permanent  blue-pretty  association  complex 


ii2  SINE  AD 

as  that  dear  infidel  writer  Wullahim  Jamis  would  say  in 
his  book  on  the  l  Principles  of  Psychology,'  Volume  I." 

The  Caliph  regarded  her  sternly. 

"  How  do  such  unknown  prints  come  into  your  hands, 
daughter?  " 

"  We  studied  him  in  school  at  Ispahan,  papa.  He  is  quite 
safe.  Ask  Sinbad;  it's  one  of  his  own  countrymen." 

"  Is  that  the  truth?  "  asked  the  Caliph. 

"It  is  true,  Fountain  Head  of  Felicity,"  I  said.  "  At 
home  we  call  him  James.  There  were  three  brothers — Wil 
liam,  Henry  and  Jesse." 

"  But  you  know  everything,  Sinbad," .  cried  the  young 
Khan  with  unaffected  admiration. 

"  I  do,  Excellent  One,"  I  replied  with  proper  humility. 
"  Only  I  know  it  in  spots." 

"  At  any  rate,  papa,  you  see  what  I  mean,"  said  Ayesha 
with  just  a  shade  of  impatience.  "  Style  is  democratic  be 
cause  it  means  all  sharing  alike.  That  is  why  in  the  coun 
tries  of  the  West  the  fashions  are  set  by  the  women  of  the 
theater,  who  are  all  exceptionally  beautiful.  The  idea  of 
beauty  becomes  attached  to  a  certain  color  or  a  certain 
cut,  and  we  are  all  of  us  the  better  off  for  that.  All  for 
one  and  one  for  all,  I  say." 

It  may  be  that  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  was  in  ill 
humor  for  want  of  his  usual  quantity  of  sugar  with  his 
coffee,  but  he  frowned  into  his  beard  and  muttered:  "  Now 
I  would  give  up  much,  aye,  even  the  Chief  Controller  of 
Camel  Hides  and  Bismuth,  to  know  whence  you  draw  your 
rich  store  of  information  concerning  the  manners  of  the 
West." 


WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR  113 

"I  remember  what  I  learned  at  school,  papa,"  she  said 
-And  I  correspond  regularly  with  El  Onorina  Essrmt,  of 
Pittsburgh,  whose  husband  was  Ambassador  here  before  I 
married.    Hassan  reads  all  her  letters." 

'"it  is  so,"  said  Hassan  gravely.  «  The  lady  El  Ononna 
begins  her  letter  on  the  last  page,  continues  it  on  the  second, 
jumps  to  the  first  page,  and  ends  on  the  third.  Perhaps 
that  may  account  for  Ayesha's  somewhat  curious  impres 
sions  of  the  customs  of  the  infidel  Westerners." 

But  the  Caliph  would  not  be  appeased,  and,  as  he  puffe  > 
at  the  water-pipe  in  resentful  silence,  the  young  Khan  who 
had  been  waiting  his  opportunity,  addressed  himself  i  - 

^ ^understand  why  all  of  you  should  wear  blue  or  mus 
tard  at  the  same  time,"  he  said.    "  That  is  democracy,  as 
you  say.    But  why  do  you  change  from  blue  to  mustard 
and  back  again  with  such  painful  rapidity?  " 
«  Because  as  soon  as  one  does  it  everybody  else  does  it, 

she  said. 

"  Why  does  the  first  one  do  it?  " 

"If  she  didn't  when  everybody  else  did,  she'd  only  be 
making  herself  conspicuous,"  said  Ayesha. 

The  young  Khan  ran  his  palm  over  his  forehead  and, 
picking  up  his  coffee,  hitherto  untouched,  drained  it  at  a 

^Why  not  wear  a  uniform,  then,  like  our  troops?  "  he 
said  "  Then  you  all  start  even  and  so  remain." 

"Hassan,  dear,"  she  said  patiently,  «  do  you  imagine  we 
wear  clothes  as  clothes?  " 

"  That  I  concede,"  said  her  husband  thoughtfully. 


ii4  SINE  AD 

"  When  I  get  utterly  sick  of  my  old  things  and  must  have 
a  new  frock,  it  is  because  I  simply  must  express  my  own 
individuality." 

Hassan  had  a  worried  look. 

"  Let  us  get  that  straight,"  he  said.  "  You  call  in  Mus- 
tapha  ibn  AH  from  the  Paris  Bazaar  and  pay  him  five  thou 
sand  sequins  and  order  him  to  express  your  own  individual 
ity?  " 

"  Hassan,"  she  said,  "  I  have  saved  more  than  enough  on 
cereals  and  newspapers  this  year  to  pay  for  my  entire  ward 
robe." 

The  young  Khan  flushed  and  spoke  out  sharply.  "  You 
know  that  is  not  what  I  meant,"  he  insisted.  "  You  say 
you  put  on  something  in  cerise  to  express  yourself." 

"  Yes,"  said  Ayesha,  refusing  to  look  in  his  direction. 

"  And  immediately  ten  thousand  other  women  put  on 
cerise  to  express  themselves?  " 

She  nodded  and  picked  up  a  magazine. 

"  And  it's  democracy?  " 

"  That's  what  I  said,"  she  replied  calmly. 

"  And  it's  assertion  of  one's  individuality?  "  persisted  the 
unhappy  young  man. 

"  It  is,"  said  Ayesha. 

"  But  how  can  there  be  two  utterly  different  things  at  the 
same  time?  "  he  pleaded. 

"  If  I  haven't  made  myself  clear,  I  can't  help  it,"  said 
Ayesha,  utterly  absorbed  in  the  interior  decorating  adver 
tisements.  At  her  side  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  ad 
dressed  a  warning  cough  in  the  direction  of  the  hapless 


WHAT  THE  WOMEN  WILL  WEAR  115 

young  Khan.    But  the  latter  leaned  his  aching  forehead 
against  the  portieres  and  said: 

«  That  is  reasoning  like—" 

«  Please  don't  say  like  a  woman,"  said  Ayesha. 
heard  debates  in  the  House  of  Elders." 

« If  only  I  could  understand,"  moaned  the  young  Khan. 

Do  you,  Father-in-law?  " 

«  Son-in-law,"  said  the  Caliph  gravely,  « try  some  me 

coffee." 


STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  BURNT 
CAKES 

ON  the  first  Thursday  after  the  second  Tuesday  in  the 
moon  of  Muharran  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful 
with  the  Principal  Censor  took  train  from  the  capital  for  the 
new  links  thirty  miles  up  the  river  in  order  to  test  out  the 
short  fourteenth,  which  for  some  months  has  been  the  talk 
of  the  town. 

The  skies  were  threatening  when  his  Majesty  departed 
and  it  was  drizzling  when  they  teed  off,  but  the  Caliph 
would  not  listen  to  reason.  They  were  at  the  other  end  of 
the  links  from  the  clubhouse  when  the  storm  broke,  and  by 
the  time  they  had  presented  themselves  for  shelter  at  the 
door  of  a  herdsman's  cottage,  for  which  they  ran  with  all 
speed,  discarding  their  clubs  on  the  way,  the  two  were 
drenched  to  the  skin. 

In  the  hut  they  found  a  middle-aged  woman  of  sharp 
aspect,  who  was  baking  millet  cakes  on  the  open  hearth. 
To  their  request  for  permission  to  dry  their  clothes  before 
the  fire,  she  demurred  at  first.  Then,  softening  somewhat 
to  their  pitiable  state,  she  consented  to  give  them  hospitality 
on  condition  that  they  keep  a  careful  eye  on  the  millet 
cakes  while  she  went  outside  to  look  after  the  cattle  in  the 
shed.  When  she  returned  after  half  an  hour,  the  Caliph  had 
almost  succeeded  in  convincing  the  Principal  Censor  that 
par  four  on  the  long  second  hole  was  an  outrageous  imposi- 

116 


THE  BURNT  CAKES  117 

tion  on  the  average  player  who  does  not  go  in  for  swatting 
the  ball,  and  the  cakes  were  burned  to  a  coal. 

"  Now,  may  Allah  deliver  me  from  ever  setting  eyes  again 
on  so  clumsy  a  pair  of  louts/'  cried  the  middle-aged  woman. 
"  Out  with  the  two  of  you,  I  say."  But  as  they  meekly 
rose  to  depart,  she  slackened  somewhat  in  her  anger 
and  commanded  them  to  stay  till  the  storm  was  over,  seeing 
that  the  damage  was  done.  "  Only  I  wonder,"  she  com 
plained,  "  what  sort  of  men  you  be  and  what  is  your  occupa 
tion  that  you  cannot  be  trusted  with  a  panful  of  cakes  on 
the  ashes.  I  pity  the  Caliph,  if  with  the  help  of  such  as 
you  he  must  wage  and  win  a  war.  But  if  my  son,  Selim, 
were  here  to  help  with  the  cattle  I  should  not  be  compelled 
to  leave  my  good  bread  in  the  care  of  footless  strangers." 

"  And  where  is  your  son?  "  asked  his  Majesty. 

"They  have  taken  him,  of  course,"  she  said,  her  lips 
trembling  a  little.  "  And  who  knows  if  I  shall  ever  see  him 
again?  " 

"  Pray  to  Allah,  mother,  and  Selim  will  come  back  to 
you." 

She  sat  down  on  the  floor  and  rocked  to  and  fro,  speak 
ing  rather  to  herself  than  to  the  strangers.  "  Pray  to 
Allah?  "  she  said  bitterly.  "  But  what  of  the  men  in  Bag 
dad  who  have  taken  my  son?  What  will  they  do  with 
him?  " 

"They,  too,  are  trying  to  give  their  best,  mother,"  said 
the  Caliph. 

"  Their  best,"  she  cried  bitterly.  "  They  are  but  men. 
And  if  they  fail,  if  they  fall  asleep  over  the  fire  as  you  two 
have  done,  what  will  happen  to  my  son?  " 


n8  SINBAD 

"  Old  woman,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  "  in  speaking 
thus  of  his  Majesty's  Government,  you  violate  Article  XVI, 
Section  23,  Paragraph  13 — " 

"  Be  quiet,  P.  C,"  said  the  Caliph,  and  then  to  the  mid 
dle-aged  woman:  "  You  speak  truth,  mother.  I,  too,  have 
puzzled  over  this  sad  business  of  governing  men,  which  is  but 
a  business  in  which  mistakes  are  paid  for  in  men's  happiness 
and  men's  lives.  But  what  is  the  way  out  of  it?  " 

"Let  the  rulers  fight  their  own  battles,"  cried  the  old 
woman. 

"  In  the  early  days  we  used  to  do  that,"  said  the  Com 
mander  of  the  Faithful.  "  In  those  days  the  kings  were 
heroes  and  a  nation's  fate  might  be  left  to  the  strength  of 
their  stout  right  arm.  Would  you  have  the  fate  of  Meso 
potamia  now  decided  by  the  Caliph  in  single  combat?  I 
have  heard — " 

"  I,  too,  have  heard,"  said  the  woman  with  a  sniff  of  con 
tempt.  "  An  elderly  gentleman,  soft  with  feeding  and  the 
harem.  A  noble  warrior,  to  be  sure.  My  Selim  would  make 
two  bites  of  him." 

"Woman,"  cried  the  Principal  Censor,  "by  virtue  of 
Postal  Order  Number  3456,  you  are — " 

"  Keep  your  tunic  on,  P.  C.,"  said  the  Caliph,  and  to  the 
middle-aged  woman: 

"  So  you  see,  mother.    And  how  did  Selim  go?  " 

"  He  went  gladly,"  she  said,  staring  into  the  fire.  "  But 
that  is  how  they  always  go,  whether  to  war  or  to  another 
woman;  and  we  are  left."  And  then,  quite  illogically,  after 
the  manner  of  women:  "What  cause  for  quarrel  have  I 
with  the  people  of  Madagascar?  What  right  has  the  Caliph 


THE  BURNT  CAKES  119 

to  make  war  for  me?  Do  you  know  what?  There  is  some 
woman  in  Madagascar  whose  son  has  been  taken  from  her, 
even  as  Selim.  I  will  search  her  out,  and  make  a  separate 
peace  with  her  for  our  two  sons.  Why  not?  " 

"  That  idea  has  been  anticipated,  old  woman,"  said  the 
Principal  Censor,  "  by  an  ancient  infidel  poet  named  Aris 
tophanes,  who  represents  a  citizen  of  Athens,  then  at  war 
with  Sparta—" 

"  Don't  be  a  pedant,  P.  C.,"  said  the  Caliph,  and  then  to 
the  middle-aged  woman :  "  How  will  you  seek  out  that 
woman  of  Madagascar  to  make  peace  with  her?  Will  you 
leave  your  kine  to  look  after  themselves  and  travel  across 
the  seas?  " 

"  What  is  the  Government  at  Bagdad  for?  "  she  cried. 

"  So  it's  the  people  at  Bagdad,  again,"  said  the  Caliph 
gently.  "  They  are  not  much,  but  they  are  the  best  way 
we  know." 

He  fell  silent. 

"  There  was  once  a  ruler  of  a  great  people  who  waged  a 
long  war,  in  which  many,  many  young  men  perished.  The 
war  was  not  of  his  seeking.  He  was  an  infidel.  His  name 
was  Lincoln.  And  in  his  heart  there  was  never-ceasing  pain 
for  these  men  whom  he  sent  to  their  death." 

"  For  that,  may  Allah  be  kind  to  his  unbelieving  soul  in 
the  darkness,"  said  the  woman. 

"  And  yet  that  is  not  a  bad  idea  of  yours,  of  fighting  it 
out  in  single  combat,"  said  the  Caliph,  half  to  himself. 
"  When  this  war  is  over,  mother,  we  are  going  to  take  a 
step  in  that  direction.  We  will  agree  with  the  other  nations 
to  cut  down  our  armies  by  two-thirds.  Instead  of  taking 


120  SINBAD 

ten  young  men  from  your  village  we  shall  take  three.  Some 
day,  perhaps,  we  shall  take  only  one.  Who  knows?  There 
will  come  a  time  when  no  one  will  be  taken  from  the  crops 
and  the  cattle." 

"  That  is  all  very  well/'  she  complained;  "  but  who  will 
pay  me  for  the  burnt  cakes?  " 


STORY  OF  THE  TWO  WEARY  TRAFFICKERS 

NOW  as  the  Caliph,  accompanied  by  the  faithful  Mes- 
rour  and  the  present  writer,  was  making  his  nightly 
round  through  the  anti-alien  zone  along  the  river,  his  Maj 
esty  came  near  stumbling  over  the  forms  of  two  men  seated 
in  the  dark  on  the  steps  of  a  cold-storage  warehouse;  of 
whom  the  one,  with  his  head  between  his  knees,  moaned 
piteously  in  a  hard,  dry  tone,  while  the  other  with  the  aid 
of  an  electric  pocket  torch  bent  over  a  heavy  volume  that 
lay  open  on  his  lap. 

Addressing  himself  to  the  latter,  "What  book  is  this," 
said  the  Caliph,  "  that  holds  you  thus  spellbound,  oh 
stranger,  in  such  unacademic  surroundings?  " 

The  literary  enthusiast  looked  at  us  with  an  eye  in  which 
intelligence  and  profound  melancholy  contended  for  mas 
tery. 

"  Inquisitive  Pedestrians,"  he  said,  "  I  am  reading  the 
Variorum  Edition  of  the  Dialogues  of  Plato  in  the  original 
Greek;  this  in  the  strictest  confidence." 

"  But  why  at  this  hour,  and  in  this  recondite  place?  " 
cried  his  Majesty. 

The  stranger  made  no  attempt  to  conceal  his  astonish 
ment. 

"  Because  public  opinion  will  not  tolerate  my  reading 
anything  else  than  the  Glad  Books,"  he  said. 

"  And  who  are  you,  then?  "  demanded  his  Majesty. 

121 


122  SINBAD 

"  I  am  a  Weary  Trafficker,"  said  the  stranger;  whereat 
the  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  turning  to  the  present 
writer,  cried,  "  Now,  this  is  a  new  one  to  me!  What  do  you 
make  of  it,  Sinbad?  " 

"  Majesty,"  I  replied,  "  it  occurs  to  me  that  in  my  own 
country  there  is  a  class  of  men  known  as  the  Tired  Business 
Men;  it  may  be — " 

"  And  who  are  these  Tired  Business  Men?  "  queried  the 
stranger  eagerly. 

"  They  are  the  people  who  are  responsible  for  pretty 
nearly  everything  that  is  amiss  with  American  literature 
and  the  drama,"  I  said. 

"That's  me,  all  right,"  cried  the  stranger,  letting  the 
book  fall  to  the  ground  and  smiting  his  breast  with  both  his 
hands.  "  As  I  said,  the  Weary  Trafficker." 

"  And  what  makes  you  weary,  unhappy  stranger?  "  said 
the  Caliph. 

"  Everybody,"  he  replied.  "  The  reviewers  and  the  critics 
and  the  editorial  writers;  the  organizers  of  the  Mesopo- 
tamian  Folk  Drama  and  Dance  League;  the  college  pro 
fessors  who  say  that  I  stand  in  the  way  of  a  new  Mesopo- 
tamian  Art;  and  the  Society  for  Safeguarding  the  Morals 
of  Asia  Minor.  Whereas  the  fact  is  that  I  hate  the  crook 
drama  and  I  prefer  Plato  to  bed-room  farce." 

"  Then  why  not  say  so?  "  growled  Mesrour,  who  had 
picked  up  the  Greek  volume  and  was  reading  it  backward. 

"  In  the  first  place,"  said  the  Weary  Trafficker,  "  no  one 
would  believe  me,  and  if  they  caught  me  reading  Plato 
they  would  send  for  the  Bank  Examiner  to  go  over  my 
accounts.  In  the  second  place,  it  would  deprive  all  these 


THE  TWO  WEARY  TRAFFICKERS  123 

critics,  professors,  reviewers,  editorial  writers,  and  Drama 
League  organizers  of  a  principal  source  of  income,  and  I 
shouldn't  dream  of  doing  that  with  food  prices  what  they 
are." 

"  Then  who  is  responsible  for  the  crook  drama?  "  said 
the  Caliph. 

"  I  am  not  certain,"  sobbed  the  stranger,  "  but  I  suspect 
it  must  be  my  wife." 

"  She  is  also  Weary?  "  asked  the  Caliph. 

"  Alas,  no,"  said  the  stranger.  "  Fatima  is  indefatigable. 
For  when  I  come  home  at  night  and  express  my  intention  to 
put  on  carpet  slippers  and  read  Plato  for  the  rest  of  the 
evening  she  insists  that  we  go  to  the  theater.  But  on  our 
way  home  she  turns  to  me  and  says,  '  That  is  the  kind  of 
drama  you  men  acclaim  and  support!  '  Always,  oh  stranger, 
it  is  the  man  who  pays,"  and  he  rocked  back  and  forth  in 
his  woe. 

"  It  is  hard,"  said  the  Caliph. 

"  Even  so,"  replied  the  stranger.  Then,  brightening  un 
der  our  sympathy:  "  Yet  am  I  not  so  unfortunate  as  this, 
my  neighbor." 

He  put  his  arm  tenderly  around  the  shoulders  of  his  com 
panion,  who  had  not  budged  from  his  semi-recumbent  posi 
tion,  and  lifted  him  so  as  to  let  our  gaze  fall  upon  his  coun 
tenance,  from  which,  alas,  the  light  of  reason  had  long 
since  fled.  The  man  stared  at  us,  and  from  between  his 
lips  poured  forth  an  idiot  gabble  which  made  even  sturdy 
Mesrour  turn  away  and  feel  in  the  folds  of  his  turban  for 
his  handkerchief. 

"  This,  too,  is  a  Weary  Trafficker?  »  I  asked. 


124  SINE  AD 

"  More  than  weary,"  said  the  first  stranger.  "  One  of 
the  leading  members  of  our  local  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
his  mind  has  collapsed  utterly  under  the  strain  of  war 
mathematics.  Give  ear." 

I  pulled  forth  my  note  book  and  we  all  leaned  forward 
to  catch  the  drift  of  that  mumbled  soliloquy.  Subject  to 
the  interposition  of  the  Censor,  this  is  what  we  heard: 

"  If  in  the  year  1916  I  was  a  super-normal  married  man 
with  two  children  under  the  age  of  eighteen  collected  at  the 
source  and  reciprocally  convertible  into  non-taxable  Gov 
ernment  securities — " 

The  Caliph  turned  a  horrified,  questioning  face  to  the 
first  stranger.  The  latter  made  a  brave  attempt  to  smile 
and  failed. 

"  He  is  trying  to  figure  out  his  income-tax  under  the  new 
schedules,"  he  said. 

The  unhappy  mental  wreck  at  his  side  looked  up  at  the 
sound  of  the  familiar  word,  laughed,  nodded  at  us  in  a 
friendly  manner  that  made  the  chills  run  down  my  back, 
and  said: 

"  Subtracting  2  per  cent,  of  all  sums  above  20,000  sequins 
from  the  date  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  and  adding  all  ac 
crued  debts,  personal  and  realty,  to  the  extra  thirteen  days 
of  the  Russian  calendar  for  the  years  1916  and  1917,  in 
parallel  columns,  the  result  in  red  ink  for  all  aged  and  in 
firm  dependents — " 

"  This  is  awful,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  Is  there  no  hope  at 
all?  " 

"  We  have  tried  pretty  nearly  everything,"  said  the  first 
stranger.  "  At  my  instance  he  has  repeatedly  tried  to  give 


THE  TWO  WEARY  TRAFFICKERS  125 

away  his  entire  fortune  above  2,000  sequins — for  he  is  a 
married  man;  but  you  know  what  friends  are  in  the  hour 
of  need.  Men  who  have  always  been  ready  to  borrow  from 
him  on  the  slightest  provocation  have  thrown  his  deed  of 
gift  back  in  his  face  or  else  pleaded  duty  to  their  family." 

"  Then  all  is  lost?  "  I  asked. 

The  other  nodded.  "The  malady  is  progressive.  It  is 
not  only  the  income  tax  now.  Listen." 

We  bent  forward  and  I  wrote  down,  verbatim: 

"  If  7  1-3  cents  be  added  to  a  60  per  cent,  increase  in  the 
cost  of  feed  within  a  2oo-mile  pasteurized  radius  for  Certi 
fied  Grade  B— " 

"  The  milk  rates,"  said  the  first  stranger.  "  He  has  been 
reading  the  dairy  advertisements." 

"  Now,  by  the  beard  of  the  Commissioner  of  Water,  Gas 
and  Electricity,"  cried  Mesrour,  "  it  were  best  to  put  this 
sad  wretch  out  of  his  misery  at  once,"  and  he  drew  his 
sword. 

But  the  first  stranger  cried  out: 

"  In  the  name  of  Allah,  desist.  He  has  a  young  daugh 
ter  about  to  be  married  happily.  Would  you  compel  her  to 
figure  out  the  special  inheritance  tax?  " 


STORY  OF  SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS 

TIME  hung  heavy  on  the  Princess  Ayesha's  hands.  Her 
husband,  the  young  Hassan  Khan,  was  engaged  in 
daily  consultations  with  the  Ministry  of  High  and  Low 
Finance  concerning  the  hundred  million  sequin  loan,  non 
repayable  and  at  six  per  cent,  deferred  interest.  His  Maj 
esty,  her  father,  was  absorbed  in  problems  of  naval  strategy. 
These,  he  said,  might  best  be  studied  from  a  hill  in  close 
proximity  to  the  golf  links.  The  women  of  Bagdad  were 
busy  with  their  hospital  work  and,  consequently,  a  truce  had 
been  called  in  the  sex  war.  Under  these  circumstances,  the 
Princess  Ayesha  was  pleased  to  summon  me  quite  frequently 
into  her  presence  and  to  while  away  the  time  by  question 
ing  me  in  regard  to  the  life  and  civilization  of  my  native 
land. 

I  found  her  on  one  occasion  in  the  company  of  the  Prin 
cipal  Censor,  who  had  been  detailing  to  her  the  progress  of 
the  war  on  land.  As  he  omitted  the  date  and  place  of  every 
engagement  together  with  the  number  of  forces  on  either 
side  and  who  won,  Ayesha  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  that 
she  found  the  Principal  Censor  delightfully  restful. 

Even  as  I  entered,  he  rose  to  take  his  departure. 

"  Must  you  go,  Hajji  Ali? "  said  Ayesha,  yawning 
slightly. 

"  Your  Imminence,"  said  the  Principal  Censor,  glancing 
at  his  wrist  watch,  "  it  is  late.  If  you  will  divide  the  mean 

126 


SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS          127 

annual  rainfall  in  Mesopotamia  by  the  average  number  of 
children  among  the  upper  middle  class  families  of  Bagdad 
you  will  have  a  very  fair  idea  of  what  time  it  is." 

He  crawled  out  of  the  room  backward  and  in  a  zig-zag 
fashion;  the  former  out  of  deference  to  his  royal  mistress 
and  the  latter  for  the  sake  of  withholding  all  information 
of  his  movements  from  the  enemy. 

The  Princess  was  exceptionally  gracious  that  afternoon 
and  bade  me  rise  after  my  second  full-length  prostration, 
•which  I  understand  is  a  low  record  for  journalists  in  Bag 
dad. 

"  Tell  me  about  the  position  of  women  in  your  own  coun 
try,  Sinbad,"  said  the  Princess  quite  suddenly.  That  was 
Ayesha's  way. 

"  Scintillating  One,"  I  said,  "  I  am  a  plain  newspaper 
man.  I  have  chronicled  marriages  and  separations,  sacri 
fices  and  scandals,  tragedies  and  farces,  millionaires'  wives 
and  shirtwaist  workers,  grandmothers  and  flappers;  but  what 
do  I  know  about  women?  " 

Ayesha  was  visibly  disappointed. 

"  I  was  so  anxious  to  know  how  the  status  of  women  in 
Turkestan  and  Bagdad  compared  with  your  own,"  she 
said. 

"  Select  One,"  I  said,  "  I  did  not  listen  well.  Concern 
ing  women  I  know  nothing.  Concerning  the  Position  of 
Woman  I  can  speak  with  authority.  Deign  but  to  ask." 

"  How  do  you  treat  your  women,  Sinbad?  "  she  said. 

"With  the  utmost  deference  and  consideration,"  I  said. 
"  We  always  remove  our  hats  when  addressing  a  lady.  We 
invariably  rise  to  our  feet  when  a  woman  enters  the  room. 


128  SINBAD 

The  man  who  will  hesitate  to  give  up  his  seat  to  a  woman 
in  a  public  conveyance  is  a  rare  exception.  Above  all,  it  is 
quite  unheard  of  that  any  statement  uttered  by  a  woman 
should  be  challenged  by  one  of  the  opposite  sex  on  any 
ground." 

"  Do  you  think  that  is  being  kind  to  them?  "  said  Aye- 
sha  with  a  touch  of  asperity. 

"  Your  Highness,"  I  said,  "  it  is  innate  respect.  When  a 
woman  in  my  country  confuses  Kamchatka  with  Cape 
town  we  bow  to  her  superior  intuition." 

"  Do  they  frequently  make  such  mistakes?  "  said  Ayesha. 

"  Not  at  all,  your  Highness,"  I  said.  "  It  is  a  fact  that 
the  intellectual  life  of  our  country  outside  of  the  colleges 
is  almost  entirely  carried  on  by  our  women.  We  of  the 
other  sex  content  ourselves  with  a  simple  stipulation.  We 
insist  that  the  standards  of  culture  maintained  by  our  wives 
and  daughters  shall  be  higher  than  we,  the  men,  can  ever 
hope  to  attain.  This  is  popularly  known  as  the  Double 
Standard.  Custom  requires  that  the  best  in  art,  literature 
and  music  shall  be  reserved  for  the  women.  The  men  try 
to  get  along  with  what  is  merely  amusing." 

"  Always?  "  said  Ayesha,  frowning. 

"  Not  always,  Incontestable  One,"  I  said.  "  Men  will 
sometimes  be  discovered  reading  a  fine  novel  or  attending  a 
play  of  superior  merit.  The  reason  is  probably  that  it  is 
the  kind  of  book  or  play  that  every  women  ought  to  make 
her  husband  read  or  see.  Sometimes  men  will  go  to  the 
play  on  their  own  initiative  and  by  themselves.  They  do 
this  in  order  to  find  out  whether  the  play  is  a  safe  one  for 
them  to  take  their  fiancees  to." 


SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS          129 

"  I  call  that  hateful,"  said  Ayesha. 

"  You  have  spoken,  Highness,"  I  said.  "  Nevertheless 
the  custom  is  not  so  cruel  as  would  appear  at  first  sight. 
For  if  the  man  should  report  that  the  play  in  question  is 
not  quite  the  thing,  they  go  to  see  it  anyhow." 

"  So  it  gets  down  to  this,"  said  Ayesha.  "  You  men  do 
very  little  for  the  promotion  of  culture  in  America." 

"  Incredible  One,"  I  said,  "  just  a  moment.  We  do  our 
share.  You  may  put  it  this  way.  The  principal  contribu 
tion  of  my  sex  to  the  higher  life  among  us  is  in  the  role  of 
escort.  Custom  is  sharply  opposed  to  any  woman  being 
seen  on  the  streets  or  in  any  public  conveyance  after  night 
fall  without  a  male  companion.  That  is  why  the  theater, 
which  functions  chiefly  at  night,  is  the  one  form  of  art  in 
which  men  and  women  participate  on  something  like  an 
equal  numerical  basis.  But  it  is  different  with  music  which 
is  largely  an  afternoon  art.  The  same  is  true  of  picture  gal 
leries.  It  is  emphatically  the  case  with  literature,  which 
obviously  can  be  pursued  at  home  and  without  an  escort. 
Here  the  field  is  virtually  preempted  by  women  readers." 

At  this  point  the  young  Hassan  Khan  entered.  He 
greeted  me  after  his  usual  kindly  fashion,  though,  as  he 
told  us,  he  had  had  a  hard  morning  of  it  with  the  Minister 
of  High  and  Low  Finance.  The  Minister  of  Finance  in 
sisted  that  the  hundred  million  sequin  loan  should  be  non 
repayable  in  forty-two  years  and  the  young  Khan  held  out 
for  twenty-one  years.  They  finally  agreed  that  no  pay 
ments  on  the  loan  should  be  made  for  thirty  years,  after 
which  it  would  automatically  lapse. 

Ayesha  thereupon  asked  me  if  I  had  ever  noticed  the  ex- 


130  SINBAD 

ceptionally  fine  arabesques  on  the  wall  behind  me.  And 
when  I  had  sufficiently  admired  the  wondrous  art  of  the 
unknown  master  craftsman,  Ayesha  and  Hassan  were  sit 
ting  close  together  on  the  couch  and  they  were  holding 
hands. 

"  Sinbad  has  been  telling  me  about  the  women  in  his 
country,"  said  Ayesha.  "  That  is  where  you  should  have 
gone,  Hassan,  for  a  really  intelligent  wife." 

"  I  prefer  them  the  other  way,"  said  Hassan,  who,  for  a 
monarch,  was  not  devoid  of  humor. 

For  a  moment  Ayesha  looked  at.  Hassan  as  if  she  were 
about  to  call  my  attention  to  some  exquisite  specimens  of 
stained  glass  just  behind  me.  But  she  changed  her  mind 
and  recalled  that  shortly  before  the  war  she  had  met  a  de 
lightful  little  American  woman,  a  school-teacher  from  Kan 
sas.  Ayesha  asked  if  we  had  many  women  teachers  in  the 
West. 

"  Highness,"  I  said,  "  in  the  absence  of  the  Principal 
Censor  there  may  be  no  harm  in  mentioning  that  we  have 
nearly  half  a  million  of  them." 

"  But  why  women?  "  said  Hassan. 

"  Pride  of  the  Oxus,"  I  replied,  "  education  may  have  one 
of  two  objects.  It  may  be,  in  the  first  place,  a  preparation 
for  business.  That  is  why  we  entrust  the  care  of  our  chil 
dren  to  young  women  who  are  thoroughly  unacquainted  with 
the  spirit  and  processes  of  modern  industry  and  commerce. 
Or  else  the  purpose  of  education  is  to  prepare  one  not  for 
making  a  living  but  for  life,  as  Confucius  remarked  in  the 
year  576  B.  C.  Now  the  best  way  to  prepare  a  child  for 
life  is  to  hand  it  over  to  a  woman  of  good  character  who 


SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS         131 

has  graduated  from  Normal  School  at  the  age  of  eighteen 
and  who,  after  thirty  years  of  service,  has  attained  an  aver 
age  annual  salary  of  six  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  provided 
she  has  not  minimized  her  knowledge  of  life  by  getting  mar 
ried." 

"  The  pay  strikes  me  as  somewhat  meager,"  said  Hassan. 

"  Excellency,"  I  said,  "  the  deep  seated  reverence  for 
^women  which  is  one  of  the  dominant  traits  of  our  people 
finds  striking  expression  in  the  underpayment  of  women 
teachers.  In  general  it  is  recognized  that  the  higher  moral 
status  which  woman  occupies  among  us,  entitles  her  to  less 
pay  for  an  equal  amount  of  work.  We  believe  concerning 
women  in  all  gainful  occupations  that  the  more  they  are 
paid  the  more  they  spend  on  crepe  shirtwaists  and  silk 
stockings.  That  is  why  millions  of  women  in  my  country 
are  rigorously  safeguarded  against  the  temptations  which 
accrue  with  an  adequate  salary." 

Hassan  was  undeniably  about  to  express  his  agreement 
with  that  point  of  view,  but  he  caught  the  frown  on  Aye- 
sha's  face,  coughed,  cleared  his  throat,  and  said,  "  I  call  it 
disgusting." 

The  smile  Ayesha  gave  him  was  like  the  first  ray  of  the 
morning  sun  over  the  pinnacles  of  the  Koko-Nor. 

"  It's  more  than  disgusting,"  said  Hassan.  "  It's  a 
blanked  outrage." 

"  Descendant  of  the  Major  Prophets,"  I  said,  "  you  have 
spoken.  The  privileged  position  occupied  by  the  women  of 
my  country  is  even  now  being  seriously  menaced.  Oddly 
enough,  the  danger  comes  from  the  women  themselves.  For 
a  good  many  years  they  have  been  trying  hard  to  descend 


132  SINBAD 

from  their  lofty  position  to  a  common  level  with  their  men. 
The  case  has  been  summed  up  by  one  of  our  most  celebrated 
professors  of  Contemporary  Civilization  who  now  holds  a 
high  place  on  the  Shipping  Board.  He  points  out  that  so 
cial  agitation  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  in  my  coun 
try  is  in  large  measure  the  result  of  a  determined  effort  on 
the  part  of  our  women  to  climb  down  from  their  pedestal 
and  of  an  equally  determined  counter-effort  by  a  large  sec 
tion  of  the  male  population  to  shoo  them  back.  Already 
our  women  have  been  degraded  to  complete  political  equal 
ity  with  their  men.  Equal  pay  agitation  threatens  to  re 
duce  them  to  economic  equality.  Beyond  that  lie  vast  and 
menacing  possibilities,  such  as  the  cigarette  habit.  As  your 
great  leader,  Hammurabi,  remarked  in  the  year  3452  B.  C., 
it  is  a  situation  to  make  the  judicious  grieve." 

"  Sticks!  "  said  Ayesha,  with  a  contempt  that  Hassan 
evidently  thought  became  her  admirably,  for  he  asked  me  if 
that  was  not  some  one  scratching  for  admittance  at  the  cloth- 
of-gold  curtain  behind  me.  I  looked,  but  there  was  no  one 
there. 


STORY  OF  SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS   (Continued) 

THE  reader  may  have  noticed  that  I  told  the  Princess 
Ayesha  naught  concerning  the  political  status  of  the 
women  in  my  own  country.  The  reason  was  that  in  respect 
to  politics  there  is  no  difference  between  Mesopotamia  and 
the  United  States.  This  will  appear  from  the  few  remarks 
here  appended. 

The  women  of  Mesopotamia  as  a  class  are  still  in  very 
much  the  same  condition  prescribed  for  them  by  the  holy 
Koran  and  the  Philadelphia  Inquirer.  That  is  to  say, 
woman  occupies  the  position  of  inferiority  imposed  upon 
her  by  the  laws  of  nature  until  such  a  time  as  she  learns 
stenography  and  typewriting  and  alters  the  laws  of  nature. 

The  activities  and  preoccupations  of  the  women  of  this 
country  are  confined  to  the  bearing  and  nursing  of  chil 
dren,  cultivating  the  millet  fields,  feeding  the  camels,  build 
ing  houses,  hauling  canal-boats,  trafficking  in  the  bazaars, 
pleading  in  the  courts,  prescribing  for  the  sick,  writing  for 
the  screen  drama,  working  in  the  munition  mills,  canvass 
ing  for  de  luxe  editions,  climbing  mountains,  extracting 
teeth,  organizing  clubs  and  running  for  office  in  them,  drill 
ing  for  home  defense  with  spear  and  buckler,  piloting  ferry 
boats,  selling  stock  in  Ararat  Copper,  and  the  like.  There 
is  little  doubt  that  in  a  few  years  there  will  not  be  a  single 
trade  or  profession  in  which  the  women  of  Mesopotamia  will 
not  be  inferior  to  the  men. 

There  are,  to  be  sure,  some  over-bold  females  in  Bagdad, 
most  of  them  young  and  fluent  orators,  who  have  chosen 

133 


134  SINBAD 

to  speak  of  these  things  as  a  sign  of  woman's  progress.  The 
obvious  reply  to  this  was  made  by  the  editor  of  the  Bag 
dad  Barnacle.  He  pointed  out  that  the  very  fact  of  her 
making  progress  argued  woman's  inferiority.  There  is  no 
moving  forward  unless  you  are  behind.  And  he  contrasted 
the  restlessness  and  so  called  "  progress  "  of  the  women  of 
Mesopotamia  with  the  inclination  among  the  other  sex  to 
stand  pat,  as  the  Koran  puts  it,  or  even  to  go  back  per 
ceptibly. 

Nevertheless  it  happened  that  the  women  of  Mesopo 
tamia,  obsessed  with  the  idea  that  they  were  progressing, 
began  to  demand  a  voice  in  the  various  councils  and  con 
gregations  that  make  the  laws.  As  soon  as  these  laws  are 
enacted  the  Supreme  Tribunals  usually  annul  them.  When 
the  Cadis  declare  a  law  void,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  in 
dignation  among  the  populace.  But  when  the  Cadis  ap 
prove  a  law,  the  populace  gives  no  more  attention  to  it  ex 
cept  when  the  time  comes  to  repeal  it.  That  is  beside  the 
point,  however.  The  women  of  this  country  persisting  in 
their  clamor  for  a  share  in  the  making  of  the  laws,  the 
Bagdad  Barnacle  bethought  itself  of  the  fact  that  women  are 
ill-adapted  for  political  life  because  they  are  essentially 
creatures  of  emotion,  whereas  men  are  at  all  times  swayed 
by  reason.  To  show  how  reason  operates  in  the  average 
Mesopotamian  male  the  Barnacle  cited  the  following  in 
stances: 

Exhibit  A.  Abdullah  Khan,  grocer,  who  had  it  direct 
from  Ibrahim  Pasha,  who  had  it  direct  from  Mustapha  ben 
Omar,  that  200  submarines  of  the  empire  of  Madagascar 
were  captured  on  the  first  day  of  war  and  are  now  kept  hid 
den  in  the  harbor  of  Basra. 

Exhibit  B.    Yussuf  ben  Nozeyr,  broker,  who  maintains 


SCHEHERAZADE'S  SISTERS         135 

that  the  Emperor  of  Madagascar  can  invade  us  with  1,000,- 
ooo  men  in  fifty  ships,  but  that  to  invade  Madagascar  with 
100,000  men  we  need  five  hundred  ships. 

Exhibit  C.  Hassan  ben  Ali,  mercerized  silks,  who  insists 
that  when  we  capture  the  enemy  trenches  we  do  so  with 
trifling  loss,  but  that  when  the  enemy  captures  our  trenches 
it  is  out  of  fear  and  despair  and  accompanied  by  enormous 
casualties  and  acute  demoralization. 

Nevertheless  the  controversy  raged,  to  the  disturbance  of 
the  public  peace  and  the  great  hurt  of  business,  until  it  was 
decided  to  submit  the  quarrel  to  the  venerable  Cadi  Sulei 
man  ibn  Daoud. 

And  he  made  the  following  test:  He  ordered  before  him 
the  householder  Zobeyr  and  his  wife  Fatima,  and,  address 
ing  himself  to  the  man,  he  said,  "  Son,  why  should  not  Fa 
tima  vote?  " 

"  Because  she  is  not  my  equal,"  said  Zobeyr. 

"  Very  well,"  said  Suleiman.  "  Shut  your  eyes  tight,  the 
two  of  you." 

They  did  so. 

"  Now  open  your  eyes." 

They  did  so. 

"  Now  look  at  the  young  woman  in  the  booth  across  the 
street  while  I  count  four.  Now  close  your  eyes." 

They  did  so. 

"  Now  tell  me,  son,  what  manner  of  young  woman  was 
that  in  the  booth  across  the  street." 

"  She  wore  a  blue  robe,  or  perhaps  it  was  green,"  said 
Zobeyr. 

"  Was  she  tall  or  short?  "  asked  Suleiman. 

"  I  cannot  tell,"  said  Zobeyr. 

"  Was  she  dark  or  fair?  " 


136  SINE  AD 

"  I  do  not  recall,"  said  Zobeyr. 

Suleiman  turned  to  Fatima.    "  Speak,  daughter." 

"  That  girl  in  the  booth,"  said  Fatima,  "  is  no  better  than 
she  should  be.  Her  hair  is  bleached.  The  hem  of  her  robe 
on  the  left  side  is  frayed.  The  latchet  of  her  left  sandal  is 
loose.  Her  nails  are  ill-kept  and  she  has  an  unpleasant  cast 
in  the  right  eye." 

"  Son,"  said  Suleiman  to  Zobeyr,  "  manifestly  your  wife 
is  not  your  inferior  in  the  power  of  observation." 

"  That  is  an  elementary  sort  of  gift,"  grumbled  Zobeyr. 

"  Be  it  so,"  said  Suleiman.  "  Tell  me,  son,  when  will 
the  war  with  Madagascar  be  brought  to  a  close?  " 

"  In  six  months,"  said  Zobeyr. 

"  How  do  you  know?  " 

"  I  saw  it  in  the  Barnacle"  said  Zobeyr. 

"  Daughter,"  said  Suleiman,  "  when  will  the  war  end?  " 

"In  two  months,  oh  Cadi,"  said  Fatima;  "I  feel  it  in 
my  bones." 

"  Son,"  said  Suleiman,  "  your  wife  is  not  your  inferior  in 
judgment." 

"  That  is  nothing,"  said  Zobeyr.  "  There  is  really  one 
mental  quality  that  counts,  the  creative  imagination,  in 
which  women  are  notably  deficient." 

"  Be  it  so,"  said  Suleiman,  and  turned  to  Fatima. 
"  Daughter,  what  do  you  see  in  this  poor  figure  of  a  man, 
your  husband?  " 

She  flashed  back  in  white  wrath:  "Cadi,  my  husband 
is  the  comeliest  man  you  will  find  in  a  day's  journey  and 
better  to  me  than  I  deserve!  " 

Suleiman  cast  one  swift  glance  of  appraisal  at  Zobeyr. 

"  Daughter,"  he  said,  "  you  are  not  wanting  in  imagina 
tion.  Go  out  and  vote." 


STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  MODIFIED 
GARY  SYSTEM 

HIS  Majesty's  extraordinary  reversal  of  form  on  the 
links — he  took  109  for  the  eighteen  holes  at  the  As- 
surbanipal  Country  Club  last  Monday — is  not  to  be  at 
tributed  to  worry  over  the  progress  of  the  war,  as  the  com 
mon  explanation  goes,  but  to  a  far  different  matter,  namely, 
the  proposed  reorganization  of  the  school  system.  I  have  it 
on  his  Majesty's  own  authority  that  he  lies  awake  nights 
pondering  the  relative  merits  of  the  play-study-work  system, 
which  is  at  present  in  force  in  the  schools,  and  the  work- 
play-study  system,  which  has  been  brought  forward  as  a 
substitute.  "  There  is  a  vital  difference  there,  of  course, 
Sinbad,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  but  at  times  it  gets  away  from 
me." 

He  told  me  that  the  question  was  brought  up  the  other 
day  by  the  Minister  of  Circulating  Decimals,  who  is  the 
head  of  the  national  system  of  education  in  Mesopotamia 
and  who  presented  a  petition  humbly  requesting  that  the 
title  of  his  office  be  changed  to  Minister  of  Spontaneous 
Scroll  Work  and  Plumbing.  The  petition  was  discussed  in 
an  extraordinary  council  consisting  of  his  Majesty,  the  Min 
ister  of  Circulating  Decimals,  the  Chief  Mullah,  and  the 
Principal  Censor,  of  whom  the  last  was  present  to  pass 
judgment  on  the  relation  of  the  suggested  changes  in  the 
curriculum  to  the  efficient  conduct  of  the  war. 

137 


138  SINBAD 

"  Luminence,"  said  the  Minister  of  Circulating  Decimals, 
"  our  present  system  is  antiquated.  The  study  of  decimals, 
inherited  from  the  medieval  schoolmen,  has  no  bearing  on 
the  problems  of  democracy.  Whereas  Scroll  Work  and 
Plumbing  go  to  the  heart  of  modern  life;  they  are  the  edu 
cation  of  the  future.  I  leave  it  to  the  Venerable  Chief  Mul 
lah  if  that  is  not  so." 

The  Chief  Mullah  smiled  benignly  and  nodded.  The 
Chief  Mullah  weighs  270  in  his  stockings  and  radiates  op 
timism.  People  take  one  look  at  him  and  go  out  and  buy 
100,000  sequins'  worth  of  Mesopotamian  Emancipation 
Bonds. 

"  Son,"  he  said,  addressing  the  Minister  of  Circulating 
Decimals,  "  it  is  indeed  the  system  of  the  future ;  everything 
is.  It  is  also  the  system  of  the  past;  everything  is.  Cir 
culating  Decimals  was  the  system  of  the  future  1,200  years 
ago,  800  years  ago,  and  400  years  ago.  Scroll  Work  and 
Plumbing  were  the  system  of  the  future  a  thousand  years 
ago,  600  years  ago,  and  200  years  ago.  That  is  the  won 
der  and  beauty  of  the  child  soul ;  it  will  bear  up  under  any 
thing." 

"  There  is  one  thing,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  In  formulating 
your  school  program,  shouldn't  there  be  some  considera 
tion  for  the  welfare  of  the  parents?  Now,  I  was  brought 
up  under  the  old  system.  I  studied  the  classics  and  learned 
to  do  my  forty  lines  of  the  Mahabharata  in  an  hour  and  a 
half  with  the  aid  of  a  dromedary  " — this  is  the  Mesopo 
tamian  school  slang  for  a  literal  translation.  "  I  memorized 
a  number  of  names  and  dates.  I  could  bound  Kashmere 
and  Nova  Zembla,  Very  well.  But  to-day  my  little  Yussuf 


THE  MODIFIED  GARY  SYSTEM     139 

comes  home  from  his  experimental  Modern  School  and  says, 
'  Dad,  how  do  you  make  an  aeroplane?  '  I  don't  know  how 
to  make  an  aeroplane.  I  don't  know  how  to  light  a  fire  when 
I  am  lost  in  the  desert  without  matches.  I  can't  tell  north 
and  south  by  the  leaves  of  the  palm  tree.  I  don't  know 
which  way  the  seeds  point  in  a  pomegranate.  I  don't  know 
how  to  build  a  phonograph;  all  of  which  things  my  Yussuf 
asks  me,  to  my  own  great  discomfiture  and  an  undeniable 
loss  in  my  prestige  as  a  father." 

"Your  indulgence,  Majesty,"  said  the  Minister  of  Cir 
culating  Decimals,  "  but  you  will  not  deny  that  aeroplanes 
are  more  in  touch  with  the  problems  of  modern  life  than  a 
Sanskrit  author  whom  you  could  at  no  time  read  with  ease 
and  whose  language  is  now  utterly  strange  to  you?  " 

"  The  question  is  not  quite  that,  Abu  Hassan,'7  said  the 
Caliph  thoughtfully.  "  As  a  matter  of  fact  my  Yussuf 
doesn't  know  how  to  build  a  successful  aeroplane  without 
the  aid  of  his  professor  of  Scroll  Work  and  Ballistics.  So 
it  seems  to  me  that  building  an  aeroplane  which  doesn't 
fly  is  not  utterly  different  from  reading  a  classic  author 
whom  you  cannot  translate.  Yet  I  was  happy  in  my  time 
and  Yussuf  is  a  very  happy  child;  for  the  reason  that 
neither  of  us  has  been  educated  to  anything  useful.  What 
say  you,  Venerable  Father?  " 

The  Chief  Mullah  embraced  the  meeting  with  a  smile. 
"  Majesty,"  he  said,  "  a  camel  driver  became  the  founder 
of  our  faith,  and  pale  students  from  the  theological  schools 
have  conquered  the  world  with  the  sword.  Education  will 
never  keep  a  man  down." 
"  Glorious  Integrity,"  said  the  Minister  of  Circulating 


140  SINBAD 

Decimals,  "  when  you  would  prepare  a  child  for  life  you 
must—" 

"  But  that  is  just  it,"  said  the  Commander  of  the  Faith 
ful.  "I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  purpose  of  elementary 
education  is  not  to  prepare  a  child  for  life,  but  to  teach  him 
how  to  read  the  newspapers.  You  disagree,  P.  C.?  " 

"  I  merely  wished  to  remark,  Munificence,"  said  the  Prin 
cipal  Censor,  "  that  such  preparation  is  no  longer  neces 
sary.  A  proper  supervision  of  the  press  reduces  the  art  of 
newspaper  reading  to  its  very  simplest  terms." 

"  That  may  be  so,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  or  again  the  con 
trary  may  be  true;  and  the  more  censors,  the  greater  need 
for  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  newspaper  public.  But 
what  I  meant  to  say  was  this,  Abu  Hassan.  The  great  need 
in  a  democracy  is  a  public  that  can  read  the  newspapers 
and  so  keep  an  eye  on  its  rulers.  You  won't  deny  that  this 
is  really  going  to  be  the  great  problem  of  the  future.  Our 
forefathers  had  this  in  mind  when  they  established  our  free 
public  schools.  They  did  not  set  out  to  prepare  men  for 
life,  but  to  enable  them  to  discuss  politics  around  the  warm 
ing-pan  in  the  bazaar,  and  so  preserve  our  liberties." 

"  Majesty,"  said  the  Minister  of  Circulating  Decimals, 
with  a  touch  of  asperity,  "  they  do  not  learn  to  read  very 
well  in  the  schools." 

"  So  much  the  better,  I  am  tempted  to  say,"  replied  the 
Caliph.  "  That  only  makes  them  more  discontented  and 
ready  to  pass  judgment.  Take  one  striking  case.  Take 
our  enemies,  the  people  of  Madagascar.  They  are  ahead  of 
every  other  nation  in  the  kind  of  education  which  teaches 
by  doing.  They  have  schools,  and  continuation  schools, 


THE  MODIFIED  GARY  SYSTEM     141 

and  post-graduate  schools  in  scroll  work  and  plumbing  and 
aeroplane  construction  and  aniline  dyes.  And  what  is  the 
result?  They  are  the  most  enslaved  nation  of  all  and  we 
are  now  engaged  in  saving  democracy  from  their  hands.  If 
the  people  of  Madagascar  were  not  so  well  trained  for  life 
in  their  schools,  the  world  would  be  ever  so  much  better 
off." 

"  Your  Majesty  has  been  reading  Bernard  Shaw,"  cried 
the  Minister  of  Circulating  Decimals,  bitterly. 

The  Principal  Censor  looked  up. 

"  That  is  a  devil  of  a  fellow,  Shaw,"  he  said.  "  I  can  do 
nothing  with  him.  I  cut  out  every  other  word  and  it  makes 
just  as  good  sense.  I  turn  him  backward  and  it  doesn't 
make  the  slightest  difference." 

But  the  Caliph  commanded  silence. 

"  Take,  on  the  other  hand,  the  case  of  our  good  allies, 
the  people  of  Russia,  who  have  recently  sent  their  monarch 
about  his  business.  Now  who  was  it  that  brought  about 
the  Russian  Revolution?  Was  it  the  peasants  who  are 
always  in  touch  with  the  education  which  comes  from  life; 
who  know  birds  and  flowers  and  why  the  wind  blows  and 
which  way  the  seeds  lie  in  an  apple  and  can  mend  a  wagon 
wheel  and  build  an  oven  and  repair  a  plow  and  play  on  the 
concertina?  No,  Abu  Hassan.  It  is  the  workers  of  the 
towns  who  have  forgotten  all  these  things,  who  have  learned 
to  read  just  enough  to  make  them  restless — it  is  they  who 
have  shaken  the  world." 

"Your  Majesty  argues  for  an  ill-adjusted  educational 
system?  "  said  the  Minister  of  Circulating  Decimals. 

"  As  a  believer  in  democracy,  I  do,"  said  the  Caliph. 


STORY  OF  THE  DISCOURAGED  ORACLE 

AS  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  escorted  by  the 
Principal  Censor  and  the  present  writer,  was  turning 
his  face  homewards,  after  a  tour  of  the  storage  warehouse 
and  wharfage  district,  he  stopped  short  and  pointed  an  anx 
ious  finger  towards  the  river  front. 

"  Is  that  a  man,  Sinbad,"  he  said,  "  leaning  there  over 
the  string-piece  and  gazing  meditatively  into  the  waters  of 
the  Tigris?  " 

"  It  is,  Majesty,"  I  said ;  and  peering  through  the  dark 
I  was  relieved  to  find  that  it  was  indeed  as  I  had  spoken. 

"  There  is  profound  discouragement  in  the  bend  of  his 
shoulders,"  said  the  Caliph.  "  We  must  save  him  from 
himself,"  and  stealing  forward,  he  laid  a  kindly  hand  on 
the  watcher's  arm. 

"  Son,"  said  his  Majesty,  "  what  ails  you?  " 

The  watcher  turned  a  lack-luster  eye  on  our  liftfe  group. 

"  Everything,  Stranger,"  he  replied. 

"  You  find  the  world  an  ill  place?  "  said  the  Commander 
of  the  Faithful. 

"  I  should  hate  to  be  quoted  to  that  effect,"  replied  the 
other. 

"  Ah,  then,  the  world  is  good  to  live  in,  even  at  this  hour 
of  midnight?  "  persisted  his  Majesty. 

"  Search  me/'  said  the  other,  with  mingled  indifference 

142 


THE  DISCOURAGED  ORACLE       143 

and  despair,  and  turned  back  to  his  contemplation  of  the 
yellow  waters  of  the  Tigris. 

His  Majesty  massaged  his  beard  with  those  rapid  down 
ward  strokes  which  I  knew  for  the  familiar  sign  of  irrita 
tion. 

•     "  What  bothers  you,  then?  "  he  rapped  out,  like  the  clean- 
cut  masterful  hero  of  one  of  our  own  magazine  fiction  stories. 

The  midnight  watcher  turned  upon  us  fiercely. 

"  You  want  to  know  what  I  think  of  this  world  of  yours? 
Well,  I'll  tell  you.  It's  too  darned  big  a  world,  that's  what 
the  matter  is.  And  there  are  too  many  people  in  it.  It 
gives  me  a  headache." 

"  Sire,"  whispered  the  Principal  Censor,  pulling  out  his 
note  book,  "  this  touches  on  sedition."  But  his  Majesty 
motioned  to  him  to  hold  his  peace  and  addressed  himself  to 
the  stranger  in  a  voice  that  was  unmistakably  vibrant  with 
sympathy. 

"  Son,"  he  said,  "  I  frequently  experience  the  same  symp 
toms.  But  I  have  never  stopped  to  ascertain  the  cause. 
Who  are  you?  " 

The  stranger  turned  and  faced  us  with  folded  arms.  His 
aspect  was  still  downcast,  but  he  was  obviously  softening 
to  his  Majesty's  show  of  interest. 

"  I  am,  oh  Nocturnal  Inquirers,"  he  said,  "  a  Student  of 
Contemporaneous  Tendencies.  With  this  I  also  combine 
the  functions  of  an  Accomplished  Conversationalist.  In 
both  capacities  it  was  my  habit  to  sum  up  in  a  few  felici 
tous  words  everything  that  happened  to  come  up  over  the 
dessert — the  world,  life,  art,  sex,  and  the  future  of  democ 
racy,  Without  boasting,  I  may  say  that  I  was  more  than 


144  SINBAD 

moderately  successful  in  my  field.  Especially  in  prognosti 
cating  the  progress  of  world  politics  my  batting  average 
was  high.  But  now,  take  this  ridiculous  war — " 

"  That's  my  headache,  all  right,"  cried  the  Commander 
of  the  Faithful. 

"  And  how  should  it  be  otherwise?  "  demanded  the 
stranger,  bitterly.  "  I  simply  cannot  get  the  geography  of 
six  continents  into  my  head  simultaneously,  and  that's  all 
there  is  to  it;  and  what  is  more,  I  suspect  the  commanders- 
in-chief  can't  either.  While  I  am  putting  the  finishing 
touches  to  the  relief  map  of  lower  Mesopotamia  some  one 
goes  and  breaks  through  my  impregnable  positions  in  Flan 
ders,  after  I  had  demonstrated  that  those  positions  simply 
couldn't  be  touched.  And  while  I  am  busy  exhausting  the 
Kaiser's  last  reserves  on  the  Balkan  front,  he  springs  500,- 
ooo  men  upon  me  in  the  upper  valleys  of  the  Hindu  Rush." 

"  We'll  win  that  war  yet,"  cried  the  Principal  Censor, 
and  then,  aware  of  his  professional  indiscretion,  "some 
where  and  some  time." 

"  And  what  about  the  young  generation?  "  cried  the 
stranger. 

"  It  will  doubtless  grow  up,"  remarked  the  Principal  Cen 
sor,  sententiously. 

"  To  be  sure  it  will,  but  how?  "  insisted  the  stranger. 
"  Once  upon  a  time  when  the  world  was  smaller,  you  could 
say  that  the  young  generation  was  a  distinct  improvement; 
or  you  could  say  that  it  was  going  to  the  dogs.  But  now 
there  are  two  million  young  people  in  Bagdad;  of  whom 
some  go  in  for  breaking  school  windows  and  some  sit  at 
home  and  knit  for  the  soldiers  and  do  without  candy  and 


THE  DISCOURAGED  ORACLE        145 

new  shoes.  And  if  there  is  anything  worse  than  the  young 
generation  it's  the  drama." 

"  What  about  our  contemporary  drama?  "  said  the  Caliph, 
as  he  sat  on  a  coil  of  rope  and  pitched  stones  into  the  Tigris. 

"  How's  one  to  know? "  replied  the  other  dismally. 
"  Once  upon  a  time  we  had  four  playhouses  in  Bagdad,  and 
if  it  wasn't  a  degrading  and  ominous  crook-play  season,  it 
was  a  season  rich  with  promise  for  the  building  up  of  a  na 
tional  Mesopotamian  drama.  But  nowadays  if  a  building 
isn't  a  garage  it's  a  theater ;  and  when  you  have  enumerated 
thirty-seven  cheap  melodramas,  somebody  mentions  six  first- 
class  plays.  So  that  in  the  end  you  don't  know  whether  the 
drama  in  Bagdad  is  going  to  the  devil  or  is  developing  into 
a  force  for  national  uplift." 

"  But  on  the  whole,"  I  ventured  to  say,  "  we  are  going 
ahead.  Now  that  two  million  women  have  the  vote  in  the 
province  of  Bagdad,  the  general  level  of  culture — " 

The  stranger  threw  up  his  hands  in  horror. 

"Women!  "  he  cried.  "This  person  speaks  of  women! 
The  only  subject  upon  which  it  was  still  possible  to  pass  a 
bit  of  an  epigram  without  being  asked  for  evidence!  But 
now,  when  you  say  that  Woman  is  this  or  Woman  is  that, 
some  one  flags  you  with  a  napkin  and  wants  to  know 
whether  you  mean  this  kind  of  woman  or  the  other  kind. 
The  world  was  getting  too  big  for  me  with  all  the  men  in 
it.  Now  they  have  let  in  the  ladies." 

He  buried  his  face  in  his  hands  and  wept  silently. 

"You  disapprove  of  the  outcome  of  the  late  suffrage 
referendum?  "  asked  the  Caliph  softly. 

The  stranger  replied  in  heartbroken  accents, 


i46  SINBAD 

"  I  lost  twenty-one  sequins  on  that  election.  And  how 
should  it  be  otherwise?  The  voting  mass  is  getting  too  big. 
How  can  you  tell  what  it's  going  to  do?  When  it's  650,000 
votes  against  550,000  votes  they  call  it  a  smashing  majority. 
But  if  one  voter  in  twelve  went  the  other  way  the  smashing 
majority  would  go  the  other  way.  How  can  you  tell  what 
that  one  man  will  do?  He  might  get  up  on  Election  Day 
with  a  slight  indigestion.  He  might  be  dissatisfied  with 
the  way  the  war  is  going  in  Kamchatka.  Why,  you  can 
always  find  one  plain  fool  in  every  twelve  people  you  meet. 
And  now  it's  going  to  be  worse  than  ever." 

"  I  should  think  a  nice  deserted  island — "  I  suggested. 

"  I've  just  come  back  from  one,"  the  stranger  sobbed. 
"  I  was  brought  up  near  one.  We  used  to  camp  out  there 
and  go  in  swimming  without  bathing  suits.  Now  Abdul 
Fez,  of  the  Nineveh  First  National,  has  bought  it  and  there 
are  three  golf  links  and  seven  thousand  bungalows,  Allah 
be  merciful." 

But  the  Caliph,  who  had  been  thoughtfully  biting  at  the 
nail  of  his  thumb,  here  looked  up  and  said,  "  Son,  be  com 
forted.  There  is  another  side.  This  world  may  be  so  full 
of  men  and  things  that  you  can't  sweep  them  all  into  one 
flashing  epigram.  But  on  the  other  hand,  with  so  many 
people  and  things  about,  you  can  always  be  in  the  right, 
whatever  you  say.  Formerly  you  hit  it  or  you  missed  it. 
Now  you  are  bound  to  hit  something." 

"  But  it  makes  poor  conversation,"  protested  the  stranger. 

"  Not  for  the  other  fellow,"  said  the  Caliph. 


STORY  OF  THE  COUNCIL  OF  ELDERS  AND 
THE  NEWER  IMMIGRATION 

LIKE  all  other  well-informed  people  here  in  Bagdad, 
I  believed  that  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  was 
looking  forward  with  satisfaction  to  the  end  of  the  first 
war  session  of  the  National  Council.  The  Council,  yon  will 
recall,  is  the  legislative  assembly  of  Mesopotamia.  The 
name  goes  back  to  the  very  earliest  times,  being  found  in 
the  cuneiform  inscriptions,  though  there  is  a  difference  of 
opinion  among  scholars  as  to  the  correct  reading,  some 
transcribing  it  "  Council,"  and  others,  "  Belzaz." 

You  will  also  recall  that  the  Council  comprises  two  Cham 
bers,  one  of  96  members,  known  as  the  House  of  Elders,  and 
one  of  435  members,  known  as  The  Younger  Set.  There 
used  to  be  a  difference  in  the  mode  of  election,  the  Elders 
being  usually  elected  with  suspicion  and  the  Younger  Set 
with  indifference;  but  all  distinctions  have  now  been  elimi 
nated. 

Since  the  declaration  of  war  against  Madagascar  the 
Council  had  been  in  continuous  session.  It  now  stands  ad 
journed  after  enacting  a  mass  of  useful  war  legislation  and 
providing  for  the  expenditure  of  sums  ranging  from  eleven 
billion  sequins  to  one  hundred  and  forty-seven  billion 
sequins,  according  to  the  color  of  the  ink  employed  for  the 
headlines. 

147 


148  SINBAD 

Like  all  popular  assemblies,  the  National  Council  of 
Mesopotamia  has  been  something  of  a  trial  to  the  Executive 
head  of  the  Government,  because  of  its  peculiar  habit  of 
legislation.  The  Council  makes  laws  by  inserting  things 
into  bills  which  it  later  throws  out,  the  usual  apportion 
ment  of  time  being,  say,  one  afternoon  for  inserting  some 
thing  and  two  weeks  for  throwing  it  out.  This  is  naturally 
harassing  to  a  Chief  Executive  in  war  time,  especially  if  he 
has  already  been  putting  the  law  into  effect  and  is  only  wait 
ing  for  it  to  be  enacted.  For  that  reason  it  has  been  the 
common  impression  that  between  the  Commander  of  the 
Faithful  and  the  National  Council  there  was  no  love  lost. 

Imagine  my  surprise,  therefore,  when,  in  answer  to  my 
request  for  a  brief  statement  on  the  achievements  of  the 
legislative  session,  the  Caliph  looked  out  of  the  window 
thoughtfully  and  remarked:  "  It's  been  a  very  good  Coun 
cil,  Sinbad.  I  see  them  go — " 

"  Not  with  regret,  your  Majesty?  "  I  ejaculated. 

"Well,  say,  with  a  mingled  feeling  of  relief  and  sym 
pathy,"  he  replied.  And  then  very  soberly,  "We  are  an 
extremely  irreverent  folk,  we  Mesopotamians,  and  much 
given  to  light-minded  jesting  at  things  that  are,  after  all, 
very  close  to  our  hearts,  or  ought  to  be.  It  has  become  a 
habit  to  speak  of  the  Council,  and  especially  of  the  Younger 
Set,  as  by  turns  or  simultaneously  stupid,  unpatriotic,  paro 
chial-minded,  and  misrepresentative.  We  say  that  instead 
of  keeping  both  eyes  on  his  duty  the  average  Youngersetter 
keeps  one  eye  on  his  salary  and  the  other  on  his  constitu 
ency.  We  say  that  he  usually  dare  not  call  his  soul  his 
own,  but  is  always  thinking  of  the  next  election.  Now,  I 


THE  COUNCIL  OF  ELDERS         149 

leave  it  to  you,  Sinbad,  if  that  isn't  after  all  what  the 
younger  Set  is  for — to  be  afraid  of  their  constituencies.  It 
may  not  be  the  highest  statesmanship,  but  it  is  representa 
tion." 

"  But  the  national  will,  your  Majesty,  especially  in  time 
of  crisis,"  I  said. 

"  What  is  the  national  will,  Sinbad,  but  the  product  of  a 
great  fermentation  of  different  wills?  A  favorite  phrase 
describing  a  member  of  the  Council  is,  in  the  popular  lan 
guage  of  the  country,  shatt-el-ahab ,  which  means  *  Young- 
1  man-with-his-ear-to-the-ground.'  It  is  not  a  dignified  posi 
tion,  Sinbad,  but  after  all,  it  is  a  way  of  getting  at  public 
sentiment.  When  they  get  up  from  the  ground  and  start 
comparing  notes,  something  is  bound  to  emerge.  By  an 
adjustment  of  435  parochialisms  we  get  something  like  a 
general  sentiment;  and  I  am  there  to  trim  the  edges  when 
needful." 

"  Inexpugnable  One,"  I  said,  "  in  times  of  crisis  it  is  your 
Majesty  alone  that  can  see  and  think  for  the  nation  as  a 
whole." 

"  To  some  extent,  perhaps,"  he  conceded,  "  but  in  all  sin 
cerity  it  would  be  a  much  harder  task  for  me  to  see  singly 
for  the  whole  country  if  I  had  not  the  435  isolated  views  to 
guide  me,  correct  me,  warn  me,  and,  on  occasion,  irritate 
me,  perhaps.  In  the  last  emergency,  I  intervene." 

"  And  do  they  always  listen  to  reason,  Bright  One?  "  I 
said. 

"  Sometimes  they  listen  to  reason.  Sometimes  I  read 
them  a  passage  from  the  Koran  in  emphatic  tones;  that  is 
part  of  the  metier,  as  our  great  poet  Sadi  has  said." 


i5Q  SINE  AD 

He  ran  his  fingers  through  his  beard,  deeply  engrossed  in 
his  thought;  then: 

"  And  there  is  another  point  which  people  almost  invaria 
bly  overlook  in  speaking  of  the  Council  and  its  narrow  out 
look;  and  that  is  the  question  of  the  Melting-Pot." 

I  looked  conventionally  astonished. 

"You  see,  Sinbad,"  he  went  on,  "we  are  a  people  of 
many  strains  and  races.  Upon  the  aboriginal  population 
of  Accadians  and  Sumerians,  the  ages  have  deposited  suc 
cessive  strata  of  invasion — Iranian  highlanders,  Babylonians, 
Assyrians,  Persians,  Arabs,  Turks,  down  to  the  latest  im 
migrants  from  Scythia,  who  have  built  up  the  needle  indus 
try  in  Bagdad,  and  the  Mediterraneans,  who  have  dug 
most  of  our  canals  and  water  works.  Now  it  is  the  natural 
desire  of  thinking  men  that  all  these  elements  might  emerge 
from  what  we  call  the  Melting-Pot  as  a  single  Mesopo- 
tamian  national  product." 

"  Majesty,"  I  said,  "I  am  a  journalist  rather  than  a 
thinking  man,  but  the  idea  appeals  irresistibly." 

"  Quite  so,"  he  said.  "  But  people  are  sometimes  unrea 
sonable,  Sinbad.  They  expect  all  these  strains  to  mingle, 
wed,  and  blend,  in  the  turn  of  a  hand,  so  to  speak.  Where 
as  you  can  see  for  yourself  that  many  years  must  pass 
before  that  physical  amalgamation  is  completed.  It  is  not 
in  reason  to  expect  that  the  latest  arrival  from  Baluchistan, 
who  is  now  engaged  in  repaving  the  streets  of  Bagdad, 
should  take  for  his  wife  a  daughter  of  our  oldest  Chaldean 
families.  His  son  may,  but  even  from  him  we  must  not 
expect  too  much.  It  is  a  matter  of  generations." 

"  But  people  are  impatient,  Luminence,"  I  said. 


THE  COUNCIL  OF  ELDERS         151 

"  Exactly,"  he  said.  "And  that  is  where  our  National 
Council  comes  in.  Long  before  the  immigrants  from  Ba 
luchistan  have  mingled  their  blood  with  the  rest  of  the 
nation  they  will  have  elected  a  Baluchistanian  representa 
tive  to  the  Younger  Set  of  the  Council.  Perhaps  he  may 
at  times  think  more  as  a  Baluchistanian  than  as  a  Meso- 
potamian,  but  in  that  case  he  will  be  counterchecked  by 
the  representatives  from  the  Chaldean,  Accadian,  Sumerian 
Arab,  and  Turkish  districts.  In  other  words,  until  we  get 
our  perfected  Mesopotamian  type  I  like  to  think  of  the 
National  Council  as  embodying  the  Melting-Pot  in  its  most 
advanced  stage  of  fusion." 

Since  it  is  not  customary  to  applaud  or  to  make  com 
ment  on  a  sermon,  I  remained  silent. 

"  Yes,"  he  went  on  half  to  himself.  "  I  like  the  Younger 
Set.  They  have  their  weaknesses  and  extravagances,  but 
what  then?  They  have  a  passion  for  post  offices  ard 
rivers  and  harbors;  and  there  is  parasangage?  " 

"  Parasangage?  "  I  stammered. 

"The  law,"  he  said,  "which  allows  every  member  of 
the  Council  two  silver  sequins  for  every  parasang  he  travels 
to  and  from  the  capital.  As  a  result  some  of  them  have 
developed  the  habit  of  traveling  from  Basra  to  Bagdad 
by  way  of  the  Panama  Canal.  That's  a  minor  matter,  per 
haps;  only  they  have  carried  the  practice  of  parasangage 
into  their  debates.  That  is  why  a  member  of  the  Council 
can  seldom  speak  less  than  forty-eight  hours.  But  who  of 
us  is  perfect  in  the  eyes  of  Allah?  " 


STORY  OF  THE  CALIPH  AND  THE  COSMIC 
URGE 

WHEN  the  returns  from  2,546  kazas  out  of  3,324 
in  the  sanjak  of  Bagdad  made  it  certain  that  suf 
frage  had  carried,  and  that  women  at  last  were  to  enjoy 
the  privileges  which  had  been  theirs  about  the  year  2200 
B.  C.,  his  Majesty  uttered  a  great  sigh  of  relief,  rose  from 
his  divan,  smoothed  his  beard,  and  invited  me  to  accom 
pany  him  to  the  apartments  occupied  by  his  daughter  Aye- 
sha  and  her  husband  the  young  Khan  of  Turkestan.  We 
found  Ayesha  reclining  on  a  couch — she  had  but  recently 
returned  from  campaign  headquarters  in  the  Babel  Tarik — 
and  the  young  Khan  at  her  feet  reading  to  her  out  of  a 
new  volume  of  translations  from  Tchekhoff.  A  less  intelli 
gent  woman  than  Ayesha  would  have  discerned  from  the 
Caliph's  bearing  the  purport  of  his  visit. 

"  Papa,  this  is  dear  of  you,"  she  cried  as  she  ran  for 
ward  to  meet  him. 

"  Daughter  and  fellow-voter,"  said  his  Majesty  affection 
ately,  "  my  heartiest  congratulations.  And  to  both  you, 
Hassan  and  Ayesha,  my  sincere  hope  that  you  will  renew 
the  acquaintance  interrupted  by  my  daughter's  enforced 
absences  from  home  in  a  public  cause." 

I  detected  a  shade  of  embarrassment  and  pain  in  the 
young  Khan's  face  as  he  bent  to  kiss  the  hand  of  his  Im 
perial  father-in-law.  But  Ayesha  spoke  up  gaily: 

153 


THE  COSMIC  URGE  153 

"We  are  running  off  for  the  week-end  to  Basra,"  she 
said;  "and  then  back  to  work." 

The  Commander  of  the  Faithful  looked  worried. 

"  But  what  other  work  is  there  for  your  hands,  oh  daugh 
ter?  "  he  said. 

"  It's  very  simple,"  she  replied.  "  Now  that  we  have 
the  vote,  we  start  right  in  on  our  campaign  for  the  regu 
lation  of  the  wine  traffic  in  all  cities  of  the  first  and  second 
class.  It  will  be  a  bully  fight."  And  as  the  Caliph  drew 
back  in  surprise:  "  You  disapprove,  papa?  " 

His  Majesty  sat  down  on  the  couch  and  stared  hopelessly 
before  him. 

"  Daughter,"  he  said  at  length,  "  I  confess  that  I  had 
been  looking  forward  to  a  rest." 

"  But  surely  you  would  not  have  the  world  stand  still?  " 
cried  Ayesha. 

"  Not  even  for  a  year  or  two?  "  said  the  Commander  of 
the  Faithful,  pitifully.  "  If  you  only  knew  what  this  con 
tinuous  agitation  is  doing  to  my  game,  Ayesha!  I  have 
developed  an  abominable  slice.  I  was  hoping  that  perhaps, 
for  a  little  while,  there  would  be  nothing  in  the  papers  about 
protests  and  delegations.  I  don't  think  I  could  stand  many 
more  delegations,  daughter.  They  play  havoc  with  my 
blood  pressure.  And  where  is  it  all  to  stop?  When  you 
have  regulated  the  wine  traffic  you  will  start  a  movement 
for  university  reform,  and  after  that  it  will  be  rotation  of 
crops,  I  suppose,  and  after  that — "  he  waved  his  hands 
hopelessly. 

Ayesha  regarded  him  severely. 

"I'm  afraid  you're  getting  old,  papa,"  she  said. 


154  SINE  AD 

"  Perhaps  I  am,"  he  said.  "  Well,  haven't  we  old  people 
some  rights?  Only,  I  beseech  you,  Ayesha,"  he  cried  out 
in  quick  alarm,  "  please,  please  don't  go  and  start  a  move 
ment  for  the  Protection  of  Sexagenarians.  I  really  couldn't 
stand  that.  I'd  much  rather  suffer  in  silence  than  be  hon 
orary  chairman  at  an  Old  People's  mass-meeting." 

"  Father,"  she  cried,  neglectful  of  her  husband's  silent 
admonitions,  "  that's  what  all  the  stick-in-the-muds  have 
been  saying  since  the  world  began." 

"  It  must  be  a  comfort  to  stick  in  the  mud  for  a  little 
while,"  murmured  the  Caliph. 

"I'd  expect  such  opinions  from  the  stodgy  old  anti- 
everythings,"  went  on  the  impetuous  daughter  of  the 
Caliphs,  "  but  from  you,  the  successor  of  kings  and  prophets? 
It's  heartbreaking." 

"  Ayesha,"  pleaded  the  young  Khan,  biting  his  nails. 

"  Daughter,"  said  the  Caliph,  "  I  may  be  a  King  and  a 
Caliph,  but  I  am  also  a  human  being  and  a  golfer.  As 
such,  I  deserve  some  consideration.  And  mind  you,  what 
is  it  I  ask?  An  end  to  all  progress?  Not  at  all.  Merely 
an  armistice.  Why  couldn't  we  have  five  years  of  progress 
followed  by,  say,  three  years  of  comfort?  A  sort  of  Jubilee 
period,  like  the  one  which  that  sagacious  legislator,  Musa, 
ordained  for  the  Israelites.  It  was  to  be  a  period  of  rest 
in  which  every  man  sat  under  his  own  fig  tree  instead  of 
trying  to  spray  fungicide  all  over  his  neighbor's  fig  trees. 
I  believe  I  have  my  facts  right,  Sinbad?  " 

"  It  is  even  as  you  say,  Effulgency,"  I  remarked,  making 
a  mental  note  to  look  up  Israelites  m  the  encyclopedia  as 
soon  as  I  got  home. 


THE  COSMIC  URGE  155 

"  For  that  matter,"  continued  the  Caliph,  obviously 
pleased  with  his  own  happy  thought,  "  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  for  everybody  concerned.  See  with  what  fresh  energy 
you  could  return  to  the  attack,  Ayesha,  after  a  three  years' 
holiday.  That  would  be  a  sufficiently  long  truce.  In  three 
years  I  could  get  my  score-card  down  to  a  point  where 
even  the  Government  ownership  of  railways  wouldn't  shake 
it." 

"  So  it  amounts  to  this,  father,"  said  Ayesha,  "  that  you 
would  have  the  forces  of  righteousness  and  progress  mark 
time  and  not  interfere  with  the  afternoon  nap  of  a  stupid, 
selfish,  overfed  world." 

The  young  Khan,  her  husband,  walked  to  the  window 
and  played  Abu  el  Nozeyr's  Spring  Song  on  the  pane  with 
nervous  fingers,  but  the  Caliph  stroked  his  beard  and  looked 
down  on  the  costly  rug  at  his  feet,  copied  from  a  design 
by  Leon  Bakst. 

"  Now,  that  is  just  the  doubt  which  has  sometimes  come 
to  me,  daughter,"  he  said.  "  Is  it  always  a  quarrel  be 
tween  people  who  give  up  the  pleasures  of  life  to  fight  for 
righteousness,  and  people  who  will  not  sacrifice  their  com 
fort  to  duty?  Sometimes  I  think  that  the  people  who  are 
always  agitating  get  as  much  fun  out  of  it  as  those  of  us 
who  like  to  sit  still  now  and  then.  So  that  it  isn't  really 
sacrifice  and  martyrdom.  Thus  your  good  friend,  Fatima, 
wife  of  my  Under- Secretary  for  Sedition,  El  Hassim — " 

"  What  is  wrong  with  Fatima?  "  challenged  the  princess. 

"  Oh,  nothing,  absolutely  nothing,"  the  Caliph  cried  hast 
ily.  "  An  excellent  woman  and  as  brave  as  a  lion.  But 
when  I  asked  El  Hassim  the  other  day  why  his  wife  is  so 


156  SINBAD 

frequently  out  on  hunger  strikes,  he  replied,  '  Serenity,  she 
enjoys  it.'  And  even  when  she  is  not  fasting  she  asks  ques 
tions.  She  said  to  me  the  other  day,  at  the  reception  to 
the  Ambassador  from  Tegucigalpa,  '  Majesty/  she  said,  c  do 
you  not  think  that  the  young  generation  is  splendidly  grap 
pling  for  a  securer  spiritual  anchorage?  '  Now,  I  leave  it 
to  you,  what  sort  of  question  is  that  to  one  who  has  just 
returned  from  a  meeting  of  the  Confederated  Reserve 
Board?  " 

"  Father,"  said  Ayesha,  "  for  thousands  of  years  your 
ancestors  in  the  Arabian  desert  lived  a  life  of  stolid  conserv 
atism.  But  when  they  broke  out  under  the  Prophet,  they 
did  not  stop  until  they  had  conquered  half  the  world. 
Would  you  have  asked  Amru  and  Abu  Bekr  to  sit  down 
for  a  dozen  years  between  campaigns?  They  went  on,  the 
Koran  in  one  hand  and  the  sword  in  the  other." 

The  Caliph  shook  his  head,  but  smiled. 

"  A  harem-scarem  existence,"  he  said. 

"  That  is  always  the  way  of  you  men  when  you  can't 
answer,"  said  Ayesha. 


STORY  OF  SINBAD'S  DEPARTURE  FROM  BAGDAD 
FOR  POINTS  NORTH  AND  WEST 

TWENTY- FOUR  hours  after  receipt  of  my  instructions 
to  leave  Bagdad  for  home,  I  had  my  bags  in  order 
and  was  discussing  passports  with  the  Chairman  of  the 
Committee  of  Ways  and  Detours. 

"  We  shall  miss  you,  Sinbad,"  the  Chairman  was  kind 
enough  to  say.  "  Seldom  has  a  foreign  correspondent  come 
to  Bagdad  so  completely  free  from  preconceived  notions 
about  Mesopotamia,  its  language,  its  history,  its  habits,  its 
size  and  population,  or  its  geographical  location.  You  have 
written  only  what  has  been  pointed  out  to  you  and  you 
have  believed  only  what  you  have  been  told.  It  is  a  pity 
you  must  go  just  when  the  weather  and  Bagdad  are  at  their 
best." 

And  in  truth  it  is  not  without  reluctance  that  I  am  now 
leaving  the  beautiful  city  in  which  I  have  spent  nearly  ten 
months  crowded  with  the  most  delightful  experiences.  To 
picture  Bagdad  in  the  ravishing  month  of  December  would 
be  a  strain  on  my  descriptive  powers  which  the  situation 
hardly  justifies. 

The  greater  part  of  the  day  was  spent  in  a  farewell 
round  of  visits,  both  official  and  private.  Naturally,  I 
should  have  begun  by  paying  my  respects  to  his  Majesty, 
but  he  was  at  the  moment  attending  a  meeting  of  the  War 
Cabinet,  from  which,  as  I  learned  subsequently,  he  emerged 

157 


15  8  SINBAD 

with  a  very  ingenious  idea  for  a  new  kind  of  brassie  grip. 
I  therefore  turned  aside  into  the  office  of  his  Chief  of 
Police,  the  good  and  simple  Mesrour. 

Mesrour  shook  my  hand  with  extraordinary  warmth.  "  I 
am  a  simple  man,  Sinbad,"  he  said.  "  I  have  never  been 
to  college  and  I  come  right  to  the  point.  I  am  glad  you 
are  going." 

"  But  we've  been  good  friends,  Mesrour,"  I  said. 

"  Sure,"  he  replied.  "  But  I  am  responsible  for  the  per 
sonal  safety  of  his  Majesty;  and  since  your  arrival  you 
have  been  his  partner  in  adventures  that  have  made  my 
hair  turn  white.  Now  that  you  are  gone  I  will  always 
know  where  I  can  find  his  Majesty.  He  will  be  on  the 
links.  Whither  are  you  bound?  " 

"  Jerusalem,  likely,"  I  said. 

"  Allah  be  with  you,"  he  said. 

"  But  I  may  change  my  mind  and  start  for  Petrograd." 

"  Allah  and  all  his  angels  go  with  you.    Good  morning." 

From  him  I  made  my  way  to  the  apartments  of  the 
young  Khan  of  Turkestan,  where  I  found  the  young  prince 
taking  dictation  on  the  typewriter  from  the  Princess  Ayesha. 
She  was  unfeignedly  sorry  to  have  me  go,  but  consoled 
herself  with  the  opportunity  I  should  enjoy  of  studying  the 
advance  of  woman  in  the  various  countries.  To  that  end 
she  insisted  on  supplying  me  with  letters  of  introduction 
to  the  Lady  Zenaide  at  Jerusalem ;  the  Lady  Aida  at  Cairo ; 
Madame  Restova  at  Petrograd;  Madame  Dubost  at  Paris; 
Signora  Cagliari  at  Rome,  etc.,  all  of  whom  were  contribu 
tors  to  the  Encyclopedia  of  the  Higher  Emancipation  on 
which  Ayesha  is  now  actively  at  work. 


SINE  AD'S  DEPARTURE  159 

The  young  Khan  did  me  the  honor  of  escorting  me 
through  the  antechamber  of  the  apartment,  and  as  we  shook 
hands  he  remarked,  with  that  slightly  worried  air  which 
has  become  second  nature  to  him  ever  since  Ayesha  accepted 
the  chairmanship  of  the  League  for  the  Enforcement  of 
Domestic  Peace,  "  Sinbad,  I  shall  never  forget  your  services 
during  that  great  crisis  when  Ayesha — " 

"  Oh,  your  Highness,"  I  exclaimed,  "  I  have  been  more 
than  amply  rewarded — " 

"  I  was  going  to  say,  Sinbad,  when  you  see  those  ladies 
to  whom  Ayesha  has  recommended  you — if  you  could  hint 
that  they  might  write  their  contributions  on  only  one  side 
of  the  paper — good-by,  old  man." 

I  had  time  only  for  a  few  brief  words  with  the  Principal 
Censor,  whom  I  found  in  the  royal  vestibule,  superintending 
a  gang  of  plumbers'  assistants  who  were  repairing  a  leak 
in  the  radiator. 

«  Good-by,  P.  C.,"  I  said,  "  I  leave  by  the—" 

"  Never  mind  specifying  the  train,  Sinbad,"  he  whispered. 

"  And  expect  to  arrive  in — " 

"  Pray,  be  careful,  Sinbad.  Go,  and  the  peace  of  Allah 
with  you." 

"  P.  C.,"  I  said,  "  I  need  not  describe  the  state  of—" 

"  Sinbad,  for  heaven's  sake,"  he  pleaded,  and  gave  me 
his  right  hand,  while  he  placed  the  other  over  my  lips. 

I  had  scarcely  completed  my  third  prostration  in  the 
royal  chamber  when  the  Caliph  spoke  up,  in  tones  that 
pretended  to  be  sharp  but  did  not  lack  affection: 

"  Why  are  you  leaving  us,  Sinbad?  " 

"  Inimitable  One,"  I  responded,  "  it's  orders  from  the 


160  SINE  AD 

home  office.  They  think  my  usefulness  here  is  at  an 
end." 

"  So  Bagdad  is  no  longer  of  concern  to  the  outside 
world?  "  he  said  curtly. 

"  Superb  One,"  I  said,  "  the  poet  Al  Aarab  has  remarked, 
1  Happy  the  city  which  has  lost  its  value  as  a  news  cen 
ter/  There  is  nothing  more  for  me  to  see  in  Bagdad,  be 
cause  your  Majesty  has  succeeded  in  establishing  perfect 
harmony  and  discipline.  The  food  dealers  are  selling  their 
wares  slightly  below  cost.  Ships  are  being  built  faster  than 
necessary.  The  Minister  of  Munitions  and  Aviation  insists 
on  surrendering  his  rights  of  priority  to  the  Minister  of 
Anthracite  and  Bituminous;  and  the  Committee  on  Public 
Stimulation  is  never  more  than  seven  days  behind  the  news 
papers  in  giving  out  the  facts.  Why  should  I  stay?  I  go 
now  to  study  the  workings  of  democracy  in  other  lands." 

"  So  you  find  in  Mesopotamia  no  mutterings  of  the  revo 
lutionary  spirit?  " 

"None,  Intelligent  One,"  I  said.  "The  throne  of  the 
Caliphs  stands  on  bedrock." 

"  Ah,  well,"  he  sighed.  "  Perhaps  ninety-six  for  the 
eighteen  holes  is  as  much  as  any  man  of  my  age  has  a 
right  to  expect.  I  shall  miss  you." 

"  There  is  always  the  Principal  Censor,  your  Majesty," 
I  said.  "His  short  game  is  matchless." 

"It  is,"  cried  the  Caliph,  "but  the  professional  habit 
has  got  him.  Yesterday  he  suppressed  four  strokes  on  his 
own  score-card." 

"Your  Majesty  has  no  truer  servant  and  friend  than 
P.  C.;"  I  said. 


SINE  AD'S  DEPARTURE  161 

"Except,  perhaps,  yourself,  Sinbad,"  and  he  held  out 
his  hand. 

"  Oh,  your  Majesty!  " 

"  Au  revoir,  my  son.    Allah  keep  you." 


PART  II 
WILLIAMS 


THEY 

WILLIAMS  asked  if  the  American  people  was  really 
going  to  stand  idly  by  while  they  were  putting 
over  on  us  the  complete  horrors  of  the  blue  Sunday. 

"  Who  are  '  they '?  "  I  said. 

"  Why,  all  of  them,"  said  Williams  with  a  wave  of  the 
hand  around  the  room;  and  I  could  only  wonder  just  how 
the  bookcases,  and  the  telephone  directory,  and  the  pictures 
on  the  wall,  and  the  clock  on  the  steeple  across  the  way, 
were  collaborating  to  fasten  the  Puritan  yoke  on  our  necks. 

"  All  of  them,"  said  Williams,  "  who  are  in  this  conspir 
acy  to  take  away  the  bit  of  personal  liberty  we  have  man 
aged  to  hang  on  to." 

"And  do  you  believe,"  I  said,  "that  any  conspiracy  can 
really  reduce  a  free  nation  of  one  hundred  and  five  millions 
to  chains  and  slavery?  " 

"It's  worse  than  that,"  said  Williams.  "It  isn't  one 
hundred  and  five  millions.  That's  what  they — the  census 
people,  I  mean — tell  you.  It's  four  or  five  times  as  much. 
Just  add  up  all  the  conspiracies  now  under  way  and  see  if 
the  population  of  the  United  States  isn't  nearer  six  hundred 
million.  In  fact,  I  have  the  rough  figures  with  me." 

One  glance  at  Williams'  list  was  enough  to  show  that  I 
had  been,  indeed,  living  in  a  fool's  paradise  of  optimism: 


1 66  WILLIAMS 

Blue  Sunday  Conspirators 40,000,000 

Saloon  and  Race-Track  Conspirators 25,000,000 

Catholic  Conspirators   30,000,000 

Jewish  Conspirators 5,000,000 

Buy-a-Book-a-Week  Conspiracy   13,000,000 

Sinn  Fein  Conspiracy  20,000,000 

Eat-an-Apple-a-Day  Plot 15,000,000 

British-Ulster  Conspiracy  35,000,000 

Bolshevists    10,000,000 

Burleson  Home  and  Flag  Alliance 5,000,000 

Beef  Trust  Conspirators 500 

Government  Ownership  Propaganda 15,000,000 

Buy-a-Record-a-Minute  Conspiracy   20,000,000 

Write- Your- Mother-Once-a- Year  Conspiracy  ...55,000,000 

American  Federation  of  Labor  Plot 15,000,000 

Greenwich  Village-Samovar-Batik  Conspiracy  . .      500,000 

Seize-Mexico  Conspiracy 30,000,000 

Philippine  Independence  Conspiracy 10,000,000 

Wear-Your-Old-Clothes  Conspiracy 95,000,000 

"  Four  hundred  millions  already,"  said  Williams.  "  So 
much  for  your  official  census  figures." 

"  But,  hold  on  a  minute,  Williams,"  I  said.  "  You  can't 
go  and  divide  people  up  into  so  many  closed  compartments. 
Those  conspiracies  overlap.  There  must  be  Sinn  Feiners 
who  are  fond  of  an  apple  after  lunch.  There  must  be  Beef 
Trust  lawyers  who  believe  in  beer  and  light  wines.  There 
must  be  pro- Germans  who  write  to  their  mothers  now  and 
then.  I  am  personally  acquainted  with  publishers  who  get 
off  the  train  in  the  afternoon  and  kiss  their  wives  in  full 
view  of  the  engine  driver.  Your  figures  need  rectification." 

"  Exactly,"  said  Williams.  "  That's  where  the  additional 
two  hundred  million  conspirators  come  in.  All  you  have  to 


THEY  167 

do  is  to  add  in  the  Catholic  Buy-a-Book-a-Week  group,  the 
Bolshevist  Eat-an-Apple-a-Day  Alliance,  the  Irish- Jewish- 
Methodist-Government-Ownership  group,  the  Ulster- Japan- 
ese-Tonsilitis  Association,  the  Gompers-Foster-Sex  Hygiene 
drive,  the  Armenian- Gary  School  Federation,  and  the  Sinn 
Fein  Out-of-Door  Sleeping  Clubs.  Only  then  will  you  real 
ize  what  the  people  of  the  United  States  are  up  against." 

"  And  what  is  the  remedy?  "  I  said.    "  Publicity?  " 

Williams  hesitated. 

"  As  a  rule,"  he  said,  "  yes.    But  there  are  exceptions." 

Williams  said  that  he  has  personally  and  for  some  years 
past  been  the  victim  of  a  conspiracy  in  his  own  home,  with 
his  nine-year-old  daughter  Catherine  in  the  role  of  chief  con 
spirator.  The  plot  always  relates  to  Christmas  and  the  sub 
ject  matter  is  usually  a  handkerchief  personally  initialed 
by  Catherine,  or  a  shaving-towel  personally  hemstitched  by 
Catherine,  or  perhaps  a  calendar  with  poems  written  by 
Catherine  with  illustrations  by  the  author.  It  is  true,  said 
Williams  plaintively,  that  Christmas  comes  only  once  a  year, 
but  with  Catherine  it  begins  to  come  about  the  middle  of 
February  when  she  begins  to  break  ground,  so  to  speak,  for 
her  Christmas  present  to  father. 

I  told  Williams  that  I  should  not  mind  myself  being  the 
object  of  such  fond  plots  and  seditions,  and  I  said  further 
that  Catherine  must  be  a  pleasant  thing  to  have  around 
the  house. 

"  Oh,  she  is,"  said  Williams.  "  But  don't  you  see  the 
difficulty?  "  And  he  went  on  to  describe  what  a  time  he 
has  between  the  middle  of  February  and  Christmas  Eve, 
trying  not  to  unmask  Catherine's  conspiracy.  The  child 


1 68  WILLIAMS 

leaves  the  plot  lying  around  all  over  the  house.  He  can 
not  go  to  his  bureau  for  a  fresh  shirt  without  stumbling 
upon,  say,  an  embroidery  frame  which  puzzles  him  until 
shrieks  from  Catherine  command  him  to  put  the  mystery 
down  and  go  away.  He  finds  spools  of  silk  on  the  piano. 
He  picks  up  unidentified  cambrics  and  muslins  and  linen 
squares,  and  has  them  snatched  from  his  hand  by  Cath 
erine.  The  child  has,  of  course,  taken  everybody  else  but 
Williams  into  the  secret,  and  Williams  cannot  enter  into 
routine  conversation  with  his  wife  or  his  son  or  the  maid 
without  being  closely  watched  by  Catherine. 

Nay,  said  Williams,  sometime  in  early  spring  Catherine 
begins  to  put  dark  questions  to  him,  invitations  to  guess 
what  she  is  giving  him  for  Christmas,  and  Williams  says 
the  strain  not  to  guess  what  he  already  knows  is  really 
exhausting.  As  Christmas  draws  near,  said  Williams,  he 
cannot  move  about  the  apartment  without  intruding  upon 
Catherine  and  her  conspiracy.  It  has  come  to  the  point, 
said  Williams,  where  the  only  safe  way  for  him  to  enter  a 
room  is  to  walk  backwards  ringing  a  large  hand-bell.  But 
that,  after  all,  is  a  different  kind  of  conspiracy,  he  said. 

"  I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "  Between  the  Great  Hem 
stitched  Towel  Conspiracy  and  the  Great  Sinn  Fein-Blue 
Law- Government  Ownership  Conspiracy  the  difference  does 
not  seem  to  be  as  great  as  you  imagine.  Your  part  in  both 
seems  to  be  about  the  same.  When  they  c  put  over '  a 
Christmas  gift  on  you  or  '  put  over  J  a  Catholic  Conspiracy 
on  you,  the  essence  of  the  matter  seems  to  be  first  that 
you  are  a  fairly  willing  accomplice,  and  second  that  you 


THEY  169 

are  quite  prepared  to  display  joy  or  horror  at  what  you 
have  known  all  along.  People  who  don't  believe  in  Santa 
Claus  insist  on  believing  in  Conspiracy  as  the  machine 
that  makes  the  world  go  round  and  in  They  as  the  engi 
neers  of  the  machine.  And  that  is  an  infantile  thing." 

"What  is  a  person  to  do?  "  said  Williams. 

"  Persons  have  eyes,  ears,  and  a  mind  in  a  more  or  less 
advanced  state  of  development,"  I  said.  "  Why  not  use 
them?  What  sort  of  a  world  is  this,  anyhow,  in  which  things 
never  happen  through  reason  or  natural  causation  or  acci 
dent,  but  always  because  all  sorts  of  wicked  Theys  are 
pulling  secret  wires?  What  kind  of  a  man  are  you  and 
what  sort  of  nation  do  you  belong  to,  that  nothing  hap 
pens  because  you  want  it  to  happen,  but  always  because 
somebody  else  says  'Hist!  '  to  somebody  else?  Here  are 
a  hundred  and  five  million  people — I  am  not  really  con 
vinced  about  your  six  hundred  millions,  Williams — who  are 
always  being  yanked  and  pushed  and  fooled  and  wheedled 
by  They.  We  did  not  go  to  war  because  we  wanted  to  go 
to  war,  but  They  shoved  us  into  the  war.  We  did  not 
want  prohibition,  but  They  put  prohibition  over  on  us. 
We  are  bound  to  have  the  blue  Sunday  because  They  are 
going  to  force  it  upon  us.  They  raise  our  rent,  They  scalp 
us  at  the  butcher's  counter,  They  compel  our  women  to 
wear  shoes  with  leather  tops  fourteen  inches  high.  They 
sell  us  out  to  Great  Britain.  They  conduct  secret  traffic 
with  the  Soviets — well!  " 

"  What  is  the  cause?  "  said  Williams,  obviously  carried 
away  on  the  tide  of  my  eloquence. 


170  WILLIAMS 

"  Mental  laziness,  greatly  aggravated  by  war-bred  super 
stition,  "  I  said. 

"  Well,"  said  Williams,  "  why  can't  we  get  away  from 
this  war  psychology  and  settle  down?  " 

"  Because  they  have  scuttled  the  peace,"  I  said. 


CHEERFUL  GIVERS 

HOLIDAY  shopping  had  brought  Williams  to  the 
point,  he  said,  where  he  found  himself  envying  the 
Christmasless  heathen  in  his  darkness;  he  was  that  tired 
(i.  e.,  Williams).  The  problem  of  the  children  at  home  was 
not  a  difficult  one.  By  the  first  week  in  September  they 
usually  managed  to  convey  a  definite  impression  of  what 
they  wanted  for  Christmas,  together  with  precise  directions 
as  to  the  shop  window  in  the  neighborhood  where  Wil- 
liams's  duty  awaited  him.  But  it  was  different  with  Mrs. 
Williams.  Finding  out  what  she  wanted  most  was,  after 
nineteen  years,  still  a  good  deal  of  a  task.  Williams  said 
he  wished,  for  a  few  weeks,  he  were  a  Mohammedan  or  a 
Parsee,  or  something  pagan  of  the  sort. 

I  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  play  the  pedant  and  argue 
that  Mohammedans  are  not  pagans ;  or  to  point  out  that  if 
he  were  a  Mohammedan  he  would  probably  have  several 
Mrs.  Williamses  to  buy  gifts  for,  if  not  for  Christmas,  then 
for  the  Fourth  of  July  or  Labor  Day  or  whenever  it  is  the 
Moslems  are  annually  worried.  But  I  did  remind  Williams 
of  what  President  Butler  has  said:  that  we  have  a  new 
paganism  of  our  own  and  this  might  be  the  way  out. 

"  Why  does  Mr.  Butler  think  we  are  pagans?  "  said  Wil 
liams  with  the  light  of  hope  in  his  eyes. 

"  He  says,"  I  said,  "  that  the  present  generation  denies 
the  existence  of  law  and  has  made  personal  appetite  its  guide 

171 


172  WILLIAMS 

in  life.  He  says  that  people  think  too  much  of  their  own 
individuality  and  not  enough  of  the  basic  traditions  upon 
which  civilization  has  been  built  up." 

I  have  seldom  seen  Williams  so  emphatic  in  approval. 

"  The  president  of  Columbia  University  has  the  right 
dope,"  he  said.  "  That  is  it  exactly.  There  are  no  more 
traditions.  For  a  good  many  years  after  we  were  married 
Christmas  came  easy.  I  bought  her  half  a  dozen  pairs  of 
gloves.  Sometimes  it  would  be  silk  stockings,  before  they 
became  common.  Sometimes  I  would  put  in  extra  thought; 
I  would  look  around  for  a  week  or  two  and  get  her  a  couple 
of  blouses.  And  then  this  individuality  business  came 
along." 

"  Individuality?  "  I  said. 

"  Yes,"  he  said.  "  Lots  of  people  nowadays  make  a  living 
by  complicating  things  for  other  people  and  insisting  that 
they  realize  their  individuality.  Once  upon  a  time  I  used 
to  step  into  the  store  and  get  myself  a  dozen  white  collars. 
If  they  didn't  have  them  in  quarter  sizes  I  took  an  even  16. 
Nowadays  I  get  circulars  in  the  mail  from  haberdashers 
who  want  to  know  whether,  in  purchasing  white  collars,  I 
make  any  attempt  to  express  myself.  They  want  to  know 
whether  I  simply  buy  shoes  to  wear  or  shoes  that  will  em 
phasize  my  personality.  What  difference  it  really  makes  I 
don't  know.  All  I  know  is  that  people  in  the  subway  step 
just  as  frequently  upon  my  individual  feet  to-day  as  they 
used  to  do  upon  my  box  toes." 

"  Too  true,"  I  said. 

"  And  now  it  is  Christmas  gifts.  I  get  circulars  asking 
whether  the  things  I  give  are  just  presents  or  whether  they 


CHEERFUL  GIVERS  173 

reflect  the  soul  of  the  recipient.  Some  go  further.  They 
want  me  to  take  a  little  time  off  and  ask  myself  whether  I 
ought  to  give  Mrs.  Williams  the  thing  she  wants  most  or 
the  thing  I  want  to  give  her  most.  That's  a  nice  problem 
to  unload  upon  a  man,  with  business  what  it  is." 

"  But  these  circulars  go  beyond  asking  questions,  don't 
they?  "  I  said.  "  They  offer  to  help  out." 

"  True,"  he  said.  "  I  have  received  circulars  from  people 
suggesting  that  I  let  them  pick  out  a  Christmas  present  for 
Mrs.  Williams — something  that  would  be  sure  to  express 
her  inmost  self,  something  that  would  make  her  feel  the 
thing  was  manufactured,  jobbed,  wholesaled,  and  retailed 
for  her  and  her  only.  And  in  a  way  it  is  a  tempting  offer. 
All  I'd  have  to  do  is  to  say  that  Mrs.  Williams's  telephone 
number  is  4856  and  they'll  send  her  a  book-rack  that  will 
appeal  to  all  that  is  deepest  in  her.  But  I  can't  quite  see 
that." 

"  Williams,"  I  said,  "  be  a  pagan.    Buy  her  a  hat." 

"  A  hat?  "  said  Williams.  "  It  isn't  done.  And  I  wouldn't 
know  how  to  go  about  it  anyhow.  Besides,  how  do  I  know 
she'd  like  it?  We  sometimes  differ  in  that  respect." 

"  Exactly,"  I  said.  "  Express  your  personality  by  getting 
her  a  hat  you  like.  Then  she  will  give  full  scope  to  her 
own  individuality  by  changing  it.  The  arrangement  is  al 
most  ideal." 

"  But  a  hat,"  said  Williams. 

"  Why  not  a  hat?  Have  you  ever  stopped  to  think  how 
intimate  a  part  of  a  woman's  personality  is  her  hat?  "  And 
I  showed  him  a  picture  in  Ulllustration  of  a  war  memorial 
service  in  Notre  Dame.  "  See  how  all  the  heads  are  bowed 


174  WILLIAMS 

in  unmistakable  emotion;  yet  even  in  such  reverent  mo 
ments  and  in  such  solemn  places  women  are  not  required 
to  remove  their  hats." 

"  They  do  in  theaters  and  offices,"  he  said. 

"  That  is  only  for  convenience,"  I  said.  "  The  fact  that 
they  keep  them  on  in  church  shows  how  almost  inseparable 
a  part  of  her  is  a  woman's  hat.  And  think  of  the  mere 
audacity  of  the  stroke.  There  won't,  in  all  likelihood,  be  an 
other  such  Christmas  gift  in  town.  It's  almost  Napoleonic 
—it's—" 

"  Pagan,"  said  Williams,  "yes.  But  at  my  age  it  would 
be  rather  absurd  to  start  buying  hats  for  ladies.  It  opens 
up  all  sorts  of  vistas." 

"Yet  you  want  to  get  away  from  the  commonplace,"  I 
said. 

"  If  it  may  be  done  with  propriety,"  said  Williams. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "what  is  it  that  Mrs.  Williams  does 
like?  " 

"  She  likes  what  all  women  of  refinement  like,"  he  said. 
'{  She  likes  to  be  surrounded  by  beautiful  things  that  are 
at  the  same  time  useful  and  within  our  means.  She  has  a 
really  exquisite  taste  for  color  and  fabric." 

"  And  not  too  popular?  " 

"  No,"  he  said. 

"  Buy  her  a  nice  smoking  jacket  for  yourself,"  I  said. 

He  reminded  me  that  the  problem  was  a  serious  one. 

I  told  him  I  was  quite  serious.  My  suggestion  combined 
all  the  requisites — originality,  beauty,  utility,  safety.  I 
pointed  out  how  in  the  ordinary  course  of  events  he  might 
be  buying  Mrs.  Williams  an  afternoon  wrap  that  he  thought 


CHEERFUL  GIVERS  175 

she  would  like,  and  she  would  be  buying  him  a  smoking 
jacket  that  she  thought  he  would  like.  How  much  safer 
and  pleasanter  all  round  it  would  be  if  she  bought  him  the 
afternoon  wrap  for  Christmas  and  he  bought  her  the  smoking 
jacket. 

He  seemed  interested  and  I  pressed  my  advantage. 

"  Buy  her  that  smoking  jacket,"  I  said.  "  It  will  bring 
you  closer  together  than  any  Christmas  you  have  known. 
Buy  her  that  box  of  Hidalgo  Perfectos  that  goes  with  the 
smoking  jacket.  Buy  her  that  extension  art-bronze  ash  tray. 
Put  yourself  into  the  gift.  Surround  her  with  that  holiday 
atmosphere  which  is,  after  all,  the  essence  of  the  whole  thing. 
What  more  esthetic  gift  can  you  devise  for  a  woman  of 
taste  than  a  fairly  good-looking  man  in  a  handsome  smoking 
coat  knocking  the  ash  off  a  noble  cigar  into  a  tray  that 
Rodin  might  have  modeled?  " 

He  stared  out  into  the  distance.  Then  he  shivered 
slightly. 

"  Come  out  of  the  clouds,  man  alive,"  he  said.  "  Talk 
sense." 

"  How  can  I  talk  sense,"  I  said,  "  if  I  don't  really  know 
whether  you  want  to  be  a  pagan  or  a  Christian  for  Christ 
mas?  What  is  it  you  do  want  to  give  her?  " 

"  Oh,  well,  it's  already  done,"  he  said.  "  I  put  in  two 
days'  thinking.  Say  twelve  solid  hours  of  thinking.  Then 
I  went  out  and  bought  her  three  pairs  of  gloves,  three  pairs 
of  silk  stockings,  and  a  blouse.  Do  you  think  she'll  be 
pleased?  " 

"  Tell  her  about  the  twelve  hours,"  I  said. 


REALISM 

FATHER,  ever  since  Narcissa  could  remember,  snored 
in  his  sleep.  It  was  not  the  healthy,  rhythmic  rum 
ble  of  the  natural  man  after  a  hard  day's  work.  Such 
reverberations  of  the  nasal  passages  have  a  wild  beauty  of 
their  own.  ...  Of  tom-toms  droning  midnight  rites  in 
Congo  forests.  ...  Of  dauntless  cannon  rolling  over  bridges 
to  victory.  ...  No;  in  Father's  case  it  was  the  exuda 
tion  of  an  all-pervasive  spiritual  malady,  reinforced  by 
adenoids.  He  did  not  breathe.  He  choked,  gargled,  gasped 
himself  awake,  glared  a  furious  denial  that  he  had  ever 
been  asleep,  and  went  off  again. 

Father  usually  began  operations  immediately  after  sup 
per.  Narcissa  tried  in  vain  to  make  him  call  it  dinner. 
But  he  said  that  his  own  father  always  ate  supper  at  6 
o'clock  and  his  grandfather  before  him.  Immediately  after 
supper  he  removed  his  coat  and  collar,  unbuttoned  his 
vest,  sat  down  in  the  morris  chair,  lit  his  pipe,  opened 
the  only  book  he  was  ever  known  to  pick  up,  and  fell 
asleep.  The  book  was  "  Plutarch's  Lives." 

Only  Father  always  pronounced  it  Plut-artch.  He  also 
said  Alleyxander  the  Great  and  Themistokels.  ...  On  the 
second  syllable  from  the  end.  .  .  . 

The  leather  cushions  of  the  morris  chair  were  originally 
green,  but  they  were  scabrous  with  twenty  years  of  ash- 
drippings  from  Father's  pipe.  There  were  times  when,  to 

176 


REALISM  177 

flee  the  sight  of  that  chair,  Narcissa  would  have  gone  any 
where  .  .  .  with  any  one.  ...  A  caster  was  missing  from 
the  off  fore  leg,  and  as  the  chair  sagged  forward  on  the 
bias  under  the  weight  of  Father,  relaxed  like  a  monstrous 
bread  pudding,  it  took  on  the  aspect  of  leering  debauchery 
that  was,  to  Narcissa's  raw-nerved  soul,  the  Heart  of  Evil. 
The  wart  on  the  right  side  of  Father's  nose  was  pulpous 
and  iridescent  in  the  lamplight. 

If  there  was  anything  worse  than  Father  asleep  in  the 
morris  chair  it  was  Father  eating  breakfast.  Thwarted  in 
stincts,  ingrowing  appetites,  here  found  their  cataclysmic 
revenge  in  a  monstrous  prodigality  of  food  products  poured 
forth  over  napkin,  table  cloth,  and  personal  raiment.  Mr. 
Wells  could  have  read  the  history  of  years  in  the  cereal 
deposits  on  Father's  vest.  Prune  juice — and  sad,  crabbed, 
dun-colored  prunes  they  were — manipulated  as  Father  man 
ipulates  it  would  make  the  next  world  war  a  nightmare  of 
destruction.  Or  if  it  was  grapefruit.  .  .  .  Father  eating 
grapefruit  was  one  of  the  fifteen  indecisive  battles  of  the 
world.  .  .  . 

The  house  in  which  Father  lived  was  something  fierce. 
It  had  not  been  painted  since  the  day  it  was  built.  Not 
because  Father  was  too  poor  to  afford  it,  but  because  it 
was  essential  to  the  atmosphere  of  this  story.  The  porch 
steps  sagged.  The  lattice  work  under  the  porch  showed 
gaps  through  which  the  poultry  wandered  .  .  .  starved, 
scrawny,  unpedigreed  poultry  laying  eggs  without  purpose, 
without  vision,  in  sheer  mechanical  reaction  to  the  herd 
instinct.  .  .  . 

The  plumbing  was  rotten.     There  was  one  particular 


178  WILLIAMS 

faucet  in  the  bath  tub  which  has  seared  itself  on  Narcissa's 
memory  in  letters  of  a  decaying  phosphorescence.  That 
faucet  dripped  .  .  .  dripped  all  day  and  dripped  all  night 
.  .  .  without  purpose,  without  challenge,  without  construc 
tive  protest,  implacable,  gravitational,  simply  because  a 
washer  was  missing  and  uncle,  who  had  been  sent  to  the 
store  to  get  a  new  one,  had  spent  the  money  on  bootleg 
red-eye.  Narcissa  lay  awake  through  the  white  nights, 
staring  at  the  ceiling,  listening  to  the  faucet  drip  .  .  . 
dripping,  dripping  .  .  .  like  the  minister  on  Sunday.  It 
was  Poe's  torture  of  the  water  drop  on  Narcissa's  soul. 
.  .  .  The  radiator  clanged  ....  Father  chortled,  gagged, 
snorted,  gasped  .  .  .  drip,  drip,  drip.  .  .  .  She  lay  awake 
and  counted.  .  .  .  "Waste!  waste!  "  Narcissa  groaned. 
Drip,  drip,  clang,  clang,  chortle,  gag,  Plut — artch,  Alleyx- 
ander  the  Great,  Themistokels— 0  God!  O  God!  the  shame 
and  ugliness  of  it  all! 

Brother  smoked  cigarettes  behind  the  barn  all  day  .and 
shot  pool  half  of  the  night.  He  was  not  vicious.  He 
was  just  mean.  Narcissa  did  not  look  back  in  after  days 
to  brother  with  any  sense  of  active  dislike.  You  cannot 
hate  emptiness.  A  whiff  of  stale  tobacco  ...  a  nasal  fal 
setto  ...  an  Adam's  apple.  .  .  . 

Grandma  was  terrible.  She  pre-empted  the  rocking  chair 
next  to  the  radiator  and  oscillated  from  after  supper  to  10 
every  night,  savagely  rejecting  every  hint  about  going  to 
bed.  One  of  the  rockers  was  broken  off  in  front,  two  inches 
beyond  where  the  right  leg  of  the  chair  entered,  and  every 
time  the  old  lady  was  negotiating  the  return  trip  the  chair 
lurched  forward  and  sideways  and  threatened  to  spill  Grand- 


REALISM  179 

ma.  She  screeched  and  woke  up  Father  in  the  morris  chair 
and  they  glared  at  each  other  ...  a  look  of  hatred  and  sus 
picion  .  .  .  basilisk  ...  out  of  the  Pit.  ...  No  doubt 
Father  would  have  been  glad  to  precipitate  Grandma  out  of 
the  rocker  if  he  had  the  courage.  No  doubt  Grandma  was 
hoping  that  something  would  result  from  that  missing  caster 
in  Father's  morris  chair.  But  mutual  malevolence  sought  no 
'active  discharge;  it  spent  itself  on  the  air,  poisoning  it — 
chlorin  .  .  .  phosgene  .  .  .  dichlorethyl  sulphide.  .  .  .  And  she 
had  once  been  beautiful,  this  maternal  grandmother  of  hers, 
thought  Narcissa.  And  the  Comic  Spirit  had  used  Grand 
ma's  beauty  to  provide  a  mate  for  Father,  who  gurgled  in 
his  sleep,  in  an  unbuttoned  vest,  jerking  his  head  back 
every  little  while,  so  that  the  light  from  the  gooseneck 
electric  lamp  fell  upon  a  gold-plated  collar  button. 

Narcissa  felt  she  would  stifle.  She  groped  her  way  to 
the  door.  She  pressed  her  head  against  a  veranda  column, 
from  which  the  paint  was  peeling  off  ...  in  scabs. 

Only  by  contrast  with  the  hell  inside  did  she  find  just 
tolerable,  for  a  moment,  this  purgatorial  landscape  that 
stretched  out  on  every  side.  How  symbolic  of  the  life 
inside  was  this  flatness  which  ran  in  every  direction  to  the 
horizon.  Not  the  flatness  of  a  pancake  which  calls  up 
rich  associations  of  brown-and-gold  syrup.  Not  the  flat 
ness  of  a  college  professor's  cap  on  commencement  day, 
which  calls  up  youth  .  .  .  youth  .  .  .  youth.  .  .  .  How 
long  was  it  since  she  had  been  young?  wondered  Narcissa. 
.  .  .  Not  the  flatness  of  a  trombone  emitting  jazz,  which 
evokes  youth,  passion,  adventure,  challenge.  No,  it  was 
the  flatness  of  one-half  of  i  per  cent,  beer  after  it  has 


180  WILLIAMS 

been  in  the  tumbler  for  ten  minutes — Dead  Sea  .  .  .  mias 
ma.  .  .  . 

This  was  Colorado,  and  Grandfather,  who  built  the  house, 
must  have  had  an  awful  time  finding  the  flat  landscape 
which  his  stunted  soul  and  the  exigencies  of  our  story  de 
manded;  but  he  found  it.  There  were  mountains  one  might 
have  glimpsed  if  not  for  the  perpetual  fog.  When  it  did 
not  mist  there  were  sandstorms.  When  it  did  not  blow 
sand  it  rained.  Not  the  great,  warm,  fertilizing  rain  of 
freer  climes,  but  a  mean,  cold,  chill,  funereal,  dripping. 
Drip — drip — clang — gurgle — Plut-artch,  Themistokels — Ah 
God,  the  shame  and  pity  of  it!  ... 

The  children  were  dreadful.  Mabel  snooped  around  and 
listened.  Henry  had  just  got  37  per  cent,  in  his  arith 
metic  test.  He  never  washed  behind  the  ears. 


KNIGHTS  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

WE  were  talking  of  this  sudden  lurch  from  a  world  of 
sad  but  great  things  into  a  world  of  things  sad  and 
mean;  from  a  front  page  ablaze  with  the  lawlessness  of 
war  and  revolution  into  a  front  page  placarded  with  the 
sorry  lawlessness  of  profiteers,  grafters,  drunken  joy-riders, 
and  dead  babies  in  moving-picture  theaters.  And  some  of 
us  said  that  the  remedy  must  come  from  better  Govern 
ment,  and  some  said  that  the  remedy  must  come  from  a  co 
operative  citizenship,  and  we  were  just  passing  on,  by 
natural  sequence  to  Saturday's  game  at  New  Haven,  when 
an  idea  came  to  Williams. 

"  What  we  need,"  he  said,  "  is  a  new  order  of  knight 
hood;  a  secret  order.  We  need  a  brotherhood  consecrated 
to  the  task  of  making  trouble  on  underheated  trolley  cars." 

We  asked  why  trolley  cars,  and  he  said  not  trolley  cars 
merely,  but  they  would  do  to  begin  with.  He  said  that 
trolley  cars  were  cold  in  winter  because  the  public  was  too 
busy  to  make  trouble.  People  had  to  reach  the  office  at  9 
and  were  eager  to  get  home  at  6:30,  and  never  had  the  time 
to  appear  in  court  against  railroad  companies.  People  were 
timid,  too;  but  the  great  difficulty  was  that  they  had  no 
time.  We  needed  an  order  of  knighthood  whose  business 
it  should  be  to  make  trouble.  We  might  pay  the  members 
$5,000  a  year  to  get  into  rows  and  show  up  in  court  to 
prosecute, 

181 


1 82  WILLIAMS 

The  idea  caught  on.  In  less  than  no  time  we  had  drafted 
a  program  sufficient  to  keep  a  good-sized  order  of  chivalry 
occupied  for  years  to  come.  It  would  refuse  to  pay  fares  in 
trolley  cars  where  the  temperature  was  below  45  in  De 
cember.  It  would  refuse  to  pay  couvert  charges  in  hotels. 
It  would  refuse  to  tip  ignorant  or  impudent  waiters.  It 
would  take  back  unsatisfactory  merchandise  to  the  store  and 
insist  upon  having  one's  money  back  as  promised.  It  would 
reply  to  a  thrust  from  a  subway  guard's  knee  with  a  right 
to  the  jaw.  It  would  apply  the  same  treatment  to  the  swine 
who  hurls  himself  into  an  overpacked  subway  car  and 
crushes  down  women.  It  would  insist  on  elevator  men  clos 
ing  the  gates  to  their  cars  before  starting  up  or  down. 

"  It  would  also  smash  in  the  face  of  weighing  machines 
that  refuse  to  weigh  and  slot  machines  that  refuse  to  de 
liver  chocolate,"  said  one  of  us.  And  he  went  on  to  de 
scribe  the  stark  fury  that  besets  him  in  such  cases;  to  this 
extent,  that  he  has  more  than  once  dashed  his  umbrella  into 
the  simpering  dials  and  mirrors  of  those  public  robbers,  hav 
ing  looked  around  first  to  see  that  nobody  was  watching. 

Some  one  brought  up  the  question  of  uniforms  and  in 
signia  for  the  new  order. 

"  The  uniform,"  said  Williams,  "  would  be  all  wool,  dou 
ble  sewn,  two  buttons  on  cuffs,  pockets  stayed  and  tacked 
to  prevent  ripping,  collars  basted  and  felled,  pants  full  lined 
and  reinforced  at  knees  and  seats.  In  other  words,  the 
uniform  will  be  designed  by  Hart,  Wallach  &  Bloch  with 
that  touch  of  refined  individuality  which  enables  a  man 
to  lose  himself  in  a  crowd." 

And  he  went  on  to  show  that  anonymity  was  the  prime 


KNIGHTS  AT  CROSS  ROADS         183 

requisite  for  his  new  type  of  knight  errant.  He  must  not 
be  known  as  a  knight  errant  or  his  usefulness  would  be  de 
stroyed.  He  must  be  one  of  the  crowd,  concentrating  in 
himself  all  the  wrongs  and  resentments  of  the  crowd. 

We  rose  more  and  more  to  his  idea.  One  of  us  saw  how 
the  new  chivalry  would  cure  graft  in  business.  Why  does  a 
tradesman  pay  blackmail  to  the  policeman  or  the  labor 
thug?  Because  paying  graft  is  cheaper  than  being  lugged 
to  court  for  obstructing  the  sidewalk  with  egg  boxes.  Be 
cause  paying  graft  is  cheaper  than  being  held  up  on  a  build 
ing  contract.  Well,  then,  we  would  plant  one  of  our  new 
Samurai  on  Greenwich  Street  in  the  guise  of  an  egg  mer 
chant,  and  we  would  set  up  another  Bayard  in  the  contract 
ing  business.  And  when  the  grafters  appeared  our  dis 
guised  knights  would  tell  the  cop  to  go  to  the  devil  and  kick 
the  labor  parasite  out  of  the  door.  They  could  afford  to 
do  so  because  our  knights  would  be  six  feet  two  inches  high 
and  would  have  no  bona  fide  business  to  save  from  ruin. 

Our  eyes  glowed.  We  saw  untold  possibilities  in  this 
Knighthood  of  Troublemakers.  One  of  us  said  the  idea 
could  be  applied  to  every  phase  of  our  national  life.  He 
said,  What  is  the  reason  for  our  intellectual  backwardness? 
It  is  that  Americans  are  hostile  to  the  give-and-take  of  con 
versation.  Let  some  one  in  mixed  company  remark  that  it 
is  too  bad  the  Irish  want  to  conquer  Nova  Zembla  and  the 
rest  of  the  company,  especially  if  the  speaker  is  a  woman, 
will  agree,  if  only  by  their  polite  silence.  We  are  too  polite. 
A  thousand  knights  distributed  around  a  thousand  dinner 
tables  and  instructed  to  say  in  a  loud  voice,  "  I  don't  think 
that  is  at  all  the  case/'  would  raise  the  level  of  American 


i84  WILLIAMS 

culture  in  a  week.  We  would  instruct  our  knights  in  real  1 
reverence  for  womanhood.  We  would  tell  them,  the  next  ! 
time  they  heard  a  lady  say  something  false  or  foolish,  to  j 
treat  her  rough. 

Most  of  us  thought  this  was  going  too  far,  and  we  passed  1 
on  to  the  requirements  for  membership  in  the  new  order. 

"  Over  six  feet  and  preferably  a  halfback  on  one  of  the  j 
Eastern  teams."    Agreed. 

"  A  quick  temper."    Agreed. 

"  A  sense  of  humor." 

That  puzzled  us  at  first.  It  apparently  contradicted  the 
preceding  stipulation.  But  Williams  said  a  sense  of  humor 
was  essential. 

"  Don't  you  see,"  he  said,  "  that  one  of  the  things  our 
knights  will  have  to  contend  with  will  be  the  hostility  of 
the  crowd  whom  they  are  trying  to  serve?  If  a  knight  re 
fuses  to  pay  his  fare  in  a  trolley  car,  and  expostulates  with 
the  conductor  about  the  heat,  the  other  passengers  will  tell 
the  knight  to  hire  a  hall.  If  a  knight  holds  up  a  subway 
train  because  women  are  being  trampled  upon  the  passen 
gers  will  tell  him  to  get  out  and  climb  into  his  limousine. 
The  crowd  must  be  defended  against  its  own  spirit  of  servi 
tude." 

Agreed. 

"  He  must  be  vowed  to  celibacy." 

"Why?" 

"  Obviously.  In  the  first  place,  our  knight  would  have 
to  spend  a  great  many  evenings  away  from  home;  in  police 
cells,  in  car  barns,  and  occasionally  in  hospital.  But  the 
principal  reason  is  that  women  are  a  mighty  influence  for 


KNIGHTS  AT  CROSS  ROADS        185 

servility.  Why  do  men  endure  cold  trolley  cars  or  stock 
yard  subway  cars?  Because  there  is  a  woman  waiting  at 
home  or  in  the  theater  lobby.  Why  do  we  submit  to  head 
waiters  and  taxi  drivers?  Because  we  must  consider  the 
feelings  of  the  lady  with  us.  Wives  have  been  known  to 
save  2oo-pound  husbands  from  injury  at  the  hands  of  no- 
pound  hat-check  boys.  Celibacy  it  must  be."  And  it  was 
so  agreed. 

But  toward  the  end  of  the  proceedings  some  one  cast  a 
chill  over  our  high  fervor.  He  asked  how  long  would  it  be 
before  our  knights  caught  the  New  York  spirit,  and  squeezed 
forward  meekly  when  the  guard  said,  "  Plenty  of  room  in 
front!  " 


WISDOM  OF  THE  EAST 

AFTER-DINNER  speakers,  since  the  beginning  of  the 
season,  have  demanded  justice  for  nearly  every  con 
ceivable  cause.  But  why,  said  Williams,  has  no  one  arisen 
to  demand  common  justice  for  the  Great  Wall  of  China? 
The  most  celebrated  structure  in  history,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  Pyramids  and  the  Parthenon,  it  is  also 
the  most  misunderstood.  Political  economists  abuse  it, 
feminists  sneer  at  it,  progressives  put  it  in  the  same  class 
with  Penrose  and  Uncle  Joe  Cannon.  Yet  no  one  can 
really  tell  you  where  the  Great  Wall  stands,  how  big  it  is, 
and  what  it  was  meant  for.  Completed  by  the  Emperor 
Tsin-Chi-Hwangti  in  104  B.  C.,  the  finger  of  scorn  was 
pointed  at  the  Chinese  Wall  for  the  first  time  by  an  after- 
dinner  speaker  at  the  Hotel  Ishtar  in  Antioch  in  the  winter 
of  203  B.  C.,  and  for  the  last  time  at  the  dinner  of  the 
Intercollegiate  Socialist  Society  a  few  weeks  ago. 

Williams  came  late  to  the  dinner.  The  tables  had  been 
removed,  and  he  was  just  in  time  to  hear  the  second  speaker 
on  the  program  denounce  the  Chinese  Wall  which  middle- 
class  society  has  built  around  itself  to  ward  off  the  intru 
sion  of  new  ideas.  The  next  speaker,  a  very  young  man, 
laid  much  emphasis  on  being,  with  others  who  thought  like 
him,  an  oasis  in  the  desert.  The  speaker  after  him  referred 
to  Moloch  and  frigid  Puritanism.  Having  missed  the  first 
speaker  of  the  evening,  Williams  was  unable  to  say  whether 

lit 


WISDOM  OF  THE  EAST  187 

the  speaker  had  alluded  to  the  maelstrom  of  competition. 
Departing  a  few  minutes  before  the  end,  Williams  could  not 
say  whether  the  Juggernaut  of  modern  industrialism  re 
ceived  due  mention.  It  may  be  put  down  as  a  fact  that 
the  program  of  any  radical  or  progressive  public  dinner 
includes  one  Chinese  Wall,  one  Oasis,  one  Maelstrom,  one 
Moloch,  one  Juggernaut,  one  Frigid  Puritanism. 

The  reader  will  observe  that  out  of  the  half-dozen  popular 
objects  of  reprobation  just  mentioned,  all  but  two  come 
from  the  Far  East.  Why  this  should  be  so  would  make  an 
interesting  inquiry,  said  Williams,  if  not  for  the  rule  he  has 
set  himself  never  to  wander  from  his  main  topic,  differing 
in  this  respect  from  the  ordinary  after-dinner  speaker,  who 
begins  with  the  Irishman  who  lost  his  way  on  a  dark  night, 
passes  on  to  the  Minimum  Wage,  and  concludes  with  the 
negro  who  had  a  severe  toothache. 

What,  demanded  Williams,  do  people  mean  when  they 
accuse  somebody  or  something  of  being  surrounded  with  a 
Chinese  Wall  of  indifference?  In  the  first  place,  China  was 
not  surrounded  by  its  Great  Wall.  The  Wall  merely  ran 
along  part  of  the  northern  frontier.  You  could  get  into 
China  from  the  east  as  the  Japanese  did  when  they  came 
to  study  the  secrets  of  Chinese  art,  or  from  the  west,  the 
way  Marco  Polo  did,  or  from  the  south,  the  way  the 
Buddhists  did.  Of  course  you  can  see  how  the  slander 
about  the  Great  Wall  of  China,  as  circulated  by  after- 
dinner  speakers,  has  arisen.  They  have  heard  of  China  as 
an  isolated  nation,  and  they  have  heard  of  the  Chinese 
Wall  as  a  device  to  keep  somebody  out  of  China,  and  they 
assumed  that  the  Chinese  people  built  the  Wall  in  the  form 


i88  WILLIAMS 

of  a  complete  circle  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  out  new 
ideas.  Whereas  the  fact  is  that  the  Great  Wall  was  built 
only  along  the  northern  frontier  to  keep  out  the  Tartar 
bandits,  so  that  the  Chinese  might  go  on  living  in  peace, 
cultivating  the  soil,  obeying  their  parents,  honoring  scholar 
ship,  and  remaining  civilized  while  Europe  went  on  destroy 
ing  her  little  civilizations  as  fast  as  she  built  them  up. 

Williams  could  see  why  the  purpose  of  the  Great  Wall 
should  be  misunderstood.  It  was  intended  for  defense 
against  a  foreign  enemy  and  the  Chinese  went  at  it  in  their 
own  topsy-turvy  way.  The  nations  of  the  West  know  what 
real  defense  means.  If  you  want  to  defend  yourself  against 
the  Belgians,  you  invade  Belgium  and  burn  something.  If 
you  want  to  defend  yourself  against  Mexico,  you  invade 
Mexico  and  grab  something.  If  you  want  to  defend  your 
self  against  Japan,  you  order  three  times  as  many  Dread 
noughts  as  the  Japanese  order — three  is  the  recognized  factor 
of  safety  in  civilized  countries;  if  you  want  to  make  your 
neighbor  behave,  you  must  be  at  least  three  times  as  strong 
as  your  neighbor.  But  the  poor,  muddle-headed  Chinese, 
wishing  to  keep  the  Tartars  out  of  China,  could  think  of 
nothing  better  than  to  build  a  Wall  to  keep  out  the  Tartars. 

The  reader  will  suspect,  by  this  time,  that  Williams  is 
prejudiced  in  favor  of  China.  He  admits  it.  He  con 
siders  the  Chinese  way  of  doing  things  extremely  suited 
to  the  unconventional  and  complete  life.  In  China,  for 
example,  if  a  soldier  shows  no  stomach  for  fighting  they 
make  him  a  general,  and  by  placing  him  behind  the  battle 
line  minimize  the  temptation  to  run  away.  In  China,  if 


WISDOM  OF  THE  EAST  189 

a  school  teacher  cannot  teach  they  give  him  charge  of  a 
whole  school;  and  if  he  cannot  maintain  discipline  they 
make  him  a  district  instructor,  and  if  he  still  does  not  re 
spond  to  treatment,  they  put  him  on  the  Board  of  Educa 
tion.  In  China,  if  a  college  professor  dislikes  books  they 
make  him  a  college  president.  In  China,  if  a  motorman 
is  continually  running  his  train  into  the  train  ahead  they 
remove  the  menace  by  making  him  a  division  superintend 
ent,  and  if  he  shows  no  talent  for  organization  they  keep 
on  promoting  him  out  of  harm's  way  until  he  may  rise  to 
be  Public  Service  Commissioner  and  become  perfectly  in 
nocuous.  Always  the  Chinese  idea  is  to  conserve  life  and 
the  social  welfare,  and  at  the  same  time  maintain  peace. 
Discharge  an  incompetent  policeman  and  it  will  only  create 
hard  feeling.  Make  your  policeman  a  police  inspector  and 
public  order  stands  untouched. 

Or  take  the  question  of  book-reviewing,  said  Williams. 
If  the  Chinese  have  the  greatest  body  of  serious  literature 
of  any  nation  and  the  smallest  body  of  cheap  fiction,  it  is 
because  of  their  admirable  system  of  payment  for  book- 
reviews.  Instead  of  paying  space  rates  to  the  writer  of 
the  review  they  pay  space  to  the  man  whose  book  is  re 
viewed.  The  results  are  self-evident.  Take  a  book  of 
poems.  In  the  course  of  time  the  book  will  receive  two 
hundred  reviews  ranging  from  a  quarter  of  a  column  to  a 
column  and  a  half,  and  will  sell  one  hundred  and  fifty  copies. 
Under  our  system  the  author  receives  royalties  on  one 
hundred  and  fifty  copies  to  the  amount  of  $23.50.  Under 
the  Chinese  system  the  author  receives  six  dollars  a  column 


190  WILLIAMS 

for  perhaps  as  much  as  one  hundred  columns  of  reviews, 
or  six  hundred  dollars.  Of  course  there  is  the  question  of 
what  happens  to  the  book-reviewers.  But  book-reviewers 
can  live  on  very  little,  and  in  China  especially  the  problem 
can  hardly  be  a  serious  one. 


ON  THE  FLOOR  OF  THE  LIBRARY 

UNFORTUNATE  people  who  never  read  detective 
novels;  or,  worse  still,  those  who  pick  up  a  mystery 
story  and  wonder  what  in  the  world  any  one  can  see  in 
the  book  to  keep  him  up  till  1:30  in  the  morning  with 
intermittent  trips  to  the  cold  meat  in  the  ice-box;  or,  worst 
of  all,  those  who  read  the  first  chapter  and  then  turn  to 
the  end  to  see  who  did  the  killing— such  unfortunates  think 
they  are  sufficiently  kind  when  they  describe  the  habit  as 
a  mild  vice,  not  so  hard  on  the  family  as  liquor  or  drugs, 
but  pernicious  for  the  eyesight.  They  think  they  are  100 
per  cent,  charitable  when  they  tolerate  the  practice  as  one 
form  of  escape  from  the  realities  of  a  difficult  world. 

To  such  outsiders  it  is  not  given  to  understand  that  the 
"  Mystery  of  the  Chintz  Room "  or  the  "  Smile  of  Gau 
tama  "  is  not  an  escape  from  the  world  but  an  initiation. 
They  simply  do  not  know  that  a  selected  course  in  read 
ing  from  Conan  Doyle  to  Carolyn  Wells  is  a  guide  to  the 
institutions,  culture,  and  life  outlook  of  the  nations  from 
China  to  Chili.  I  have  set  down  below  a  mere  fragment 
of  the  picture  of  humanity  which  may  be  built  up  by  devot 
ing  not  more  than  one  evening  a  fortnight  to  this  field  of 
research  hitherto  neglected  by  the  sociologists.  The  list 
might  easily  be  multiplied  by  twenty. 

(i)  The  common  belief  that  the  British  are  an  open' 

191 


1 92  WILLIAMS 

air  people  is  utterly  opposed  to  the  facts.  When  a  mem 
ber  of  the  British  nobility  or  upper  middle  classes  is  found 
dead  in  his  bed,  with  a  mystic  Oriental  symbol  scrawled 
in  blood  on  the  sheets,  the  mystery  is  rendered  all  the  more 
baffling  by  the  fact  that  all  the  windows  are  hermetically 
sealed,  the  door  is  locked  from  within,  the  transom  has 
not  been  opened  for  years,  and  the  ventilators  are  choked 
up — in  fact,  the  plumbers  were  scheduled  to  arrive  on  the 
morning  after  the  tragedy.  If  it  were  not  for  that  grisly 
Oriental  symbol,  the  obvious  conclusion  would  be  that  the 
victim  perished  for  lack  of  a  breath  of  fresh  air.  Given 
such  a  bedroom — and  nearly  all  fatal  bedrooms  in  our 
fiction  are  of  this  kind — and  it  is  a  question  which  is  the 
greater  puzzle:  how  the  murderer  managed  to  get  in  and 
escape,  or  how  the  victim  managed  to  keep  alive  until  the 
murderer  got  at  him. 

(2)  Economy  and  resourcefulness  are  not  among  the 
virtues  of  the  classes  addicted  to  being  murdered  in  their 
bedrooms  or  in  their  libraries.  Twenty  years  after  the 
tragedy  the  ghastly  stain  is  still  there  on  the  floor.  All 
attempts  at  erasing  the  spot  in  the  course  of  twenty  years 
have  failed.  What  the  scrubbing  expense  must  have  been, 
even  if  we  reckon  at  a  much  lower  rate  than  the  prevailing 
scale  of  domestic  wages  to-day,  is  obvious.  What  the  doc 
tor's  expenses  have  been  in  the  way  of  treatment  for 
nervous  derangements  inflicted  by  the  ghastly  stain  on 
various  members  of  the  family  is  easily  calculable.  Yet 
no  one  in  all  these  twenty  years  seems  to  have  thought  of 
replacing  the  blood-stained  plank  with  a  new  one,  at  a 
trifling  cost  if  done  by  day  labor,  and  for  a  really  insig- 


THE  FLOOR  OF  THE  LIBRARY     193 

nificant  sum  if  ordered  from  a  collapsible  bungalow  manu 
facturer. 

(3)  Week-end  guests  in  British  baronial  mansions  or  in 
wealthy  residences  on  Long  Island  drink  too  much  black 
coffee  before  going  to  bed.    Then  they  lie  awake  all  night. 
That  is  why  about  2  in  the  morning  they  hear  that  queer, 
shuffling  footfall  down  the  hall  to  which  at  the  moment 
they  attach  no  particular  meaning  and  the  dread  signifi 
cance  of  which  they  realize  only  next  morning  when  the 
host  is  found  dead  on  the  library  carpet  with  his  eyes 
fixed  in  a  ghastly  stare  on  the  ceiling. 

(4)  The  number  of  servants  who  have  been  in  the  employ 
of  wealthy  families  addicted  to  violent  deaths,  for  a  period 
of  forty  years  and  up,  and  for  whose  fidelity  the  survivors 
can  vouch  as  confidently  as  for  their  own  husbands  and 
wives,  is  truly  astounding.    Here,  indeed,  my  friends,  the 
psychoanalysts,  may  find  the  secret  of  my  own  passion  for 
the  mystery  novel.    Having  in  recent  years  never  succeeded 
in  keeping  a  house-worker  for  more  than  a  couple  of  months, 
it  is  perfectly  comprehensible  how  all  my  suppressed  de 
sires  draw  me  to  these  faithful  servants  who  stay  forty 
years  and  then  prefer  to  be  the  victims  of  cruel  suspicion 
by  the  coroner  rather  than  bring  disgrace  on  the  family. 
It  is  not  overstating  the  case  to  say  that  if  only  I  could 
find  a  plain  cook  who  will  stay  with  us  for  forty  years,  I 
am  perfectly  willing  to  take  a  chance  at  being  found  at 
the  end  of  the  period,  upon  the  floor  of  my  library  with 
the  ivory-handled  paper  cutter  through  my  heart.    For  that 
matter,  I  should  welcome  an  unsuccessful  attempt  at  mur 
der  if  the  assassin  is  not  apprehended  until  he  has  found 


i94  WILLIAMS 

the  paper-cutter.    As  it  is,  I  have  to  tear  the  pages  open 
by  pulling  with  both  hands  from  the  top. 

(5)  The  victims  of  foul  play  in  the  best  British  and 
American  families  never,  absolutely  never,  cut  themselves 
when  shaving,  or  scrape  the  skin,  or  raise  a  blister.    That 
is  how  the  investigator  from  Scotland  Yard  or  from  his 
private  office  in  the  Equitable  Life  Building  is  enabled  to 
detect  the  cause  of  death  in  an  almost  imperceptible  red 
spot  under  the  chin  which  the  local  police  have  overlooked 
and  which  he  immediately  recognizes  as  the  characteristic 
bite  of  the  rare  South  American  adder,  Megaloptera  Bati- 
danna.    That  method,  if  applied  to  the  average  man  after 
he  has  shaved  a  second  time  for  the  theater,  would  suggest 
that  he  had  been  done  to  death  by  the  greater  part  of  the 
reptilian  fauna  of  the  South  American  forests. 

(6)  Closely  allied  to  the  preceding  topic,  it  appears  that 
the  principal  occupation  of  the  inhabitants  of  South  America 
is  the  manufacture  or  the  jealous  preservation  of  the  secret 
of   instantaneously    deadly    poisons    unknown    to    modern 
science  and  leaving  no  visible  after-effects,  excepting,  of 
course,  the  corpse. 

(7)  Insurance  premiums  on  the  lives  of  the  British  nobil 
ity  must  be  really  enormous  at  Lloyd's.    At  least  one-third 
of  the  members  of  the  House  of  Lords  are  killed  every 
year  on  the  floor  of  their  libraries  or  at  the  end  of  their 
yew  walks  close  to  the  abandoned  garden  pavilion.     But 
it  is  worse  than  that.    If  you  have  on  the  one  hand  the  aged 
Duke  of  Beaucaire  with  an  income  of  a  million  a  year,  and 
if  you  have  on  the  other  hand  the  third  son  of  his  fifth 
younger  brother;  who  was  wild  at  school  and  has  lost  him- 


THE  FLOOR  OF  THE  LIBRARY   -  195 

self  somewhere  on  the  Rand,  and  if  you  have  no  less  than 
seven  lives  intervening  between  the  scapegrace  nephew  and 
the  ducal  title,  then  these  seven  lives  are  sure  to  be  wiped 
out  by  an  earthquake  or  a  fire  or  a  marine  disaster,  and 
it  only  remains  for  the  man  who  masquerades  as  the  nephew 
(the  real  nephew  having  died  of  drink  in  Johannesburg)  to 
come  home  and  finish  up  the  Duke. 

(8)  Nearly  everybody  in  a  mystery  novel  is  a  consum 
mate  athlete.     They  escape  the  vigilance  of  the  detective 
who  is  disguised  as  a  taxi-driver,  or  the  pursuing  avengers, 
by  getting  into  a  taxicab  at  one  door  and  leaving  by  the 
other  while  the  cab  is  in  motion.    This  will  interest  people 
coming  home  from  the  theater  who  have  sometimes  tried 
to  open  a  taxi  door  from  the  inside. 

(9)  The  wealth  of  Burma  and  Tibet  in  priceless  jewels 
would  be  enough  to  pay  the  German  indemnity  ten  times 
over.    An  emerald  like  the  Eye  of  Gautama,  a  sapphire  like 
the  Hope  of  Asoka,  a  ruby  like  the  Doom  of  Dhalatpur — 
all  of  them  stolen  from  the  forehead  of  sacred  images  by 
European  adventurers — would  be  enough  to  finance  British 
trade  with  Russia  for  the  next  fifty  years.    The  fields  in 
Burma  and  Tibet  are  cultivated  entirely  by  women.    The 
male  population  consists  solely  of  priests,  who  are  off  in 
the  West  for  the  purpose  of  recovering  the  hallowed  jewels 
and  visiting  the  vengeance  of  Brahmaputra  on  the  sacri 
legious  plunderers.    Usually  they  are  disguised  as  elevator 
runners  at  the  Savoy  or  the  St.  Regis. 

People  who  do  not  know  think  detective  fiction  is  a  vice, 
whereas,  it  is,  like  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  a  liberal  education. 


TRUMPET  CALLS  TO  DUTY 

THERE  was  one  thing  in  the  President's  address  for 
which  Williams  was  particularly  grateful.  At  no 
point  in  his  speech  did  President  Harding  summon  him, 
Williams,  to  face  the  challenge  of  new  responsibilities  and 
new  horizons. 

"  But  the  President  spoke  at  great  length  of  the  serious 
duties  confronting  the  American  people,"  I  said.  "  At  that 
busy  moment  it  is  not  likely  that  Mr.  Harding  was  thinking 
of  you  by  name,  but  he  must  have  included  you  with  the 
rest  of  the  one  hundred  and  fifteen  millions." 

"  I  said  Challenge,  not  Duty,"  said  Williams.  And  he 
went  on  to  explain  that  he  hoped,  humbly,  that  he  had 
always  done  his  duty  as  a  man  and  a  citizen  and  so  ex 
pected  to  continue.  But  it  irritated  him  constantly  to  be 
challenged  about  things. 

He  said  it  had  got  so  that  he  couldn't  pick  up  his  favorite 
weekly  magazine  without  running  slap  into  half  a  dozen 
challenges  on  as  many  pages.  The  opening  paragraph 
wanted  to  know  what  he,  Williams,  was  going  to  do  about 
the  challenge  of  Labor.  On  the  first  inside  page  he  found 
himself  right  up  against  the  challenge  of  a  Free  Mother 
hood.  Then  in  swift  succession,  Williams  said,  he  had  to 
face  Jugo-Slavia's  challenge  to  the  conscience  of  human 
kind,  the  challenge  of  the  new  scenery  for  Macbeth,  the 
challenge  of  the  new  dances,  the  challenge  of  Oskaloosa's 

196 


TRUMPET  CALLS  TO  DUTY        197 

successful  experiment  with  the  single  tax,  the  challenge  of 
the  new  spirit  in  the  Church,  the  challenge  of  the  new 
psychology,  and  the  challenge  of  the  new  bran-and-mineral 
oil  diet. 

Williams  said  he  did  not  always  want  his  weekly  editor 
to  agree  with  him;  but  in  view  of  the  cost  of  white  paper 
tie  sometimes  wondered  how  the  editor  could  afford  to 
challenge  him  so  many  times  a  week  for  15  cents,  or  $5 
a  year  by  subscription. 

"  It  is  good  for  your  digestion  and  your  soul,"  I  said, 
"  to  be  brought  up  short  like  that.  It  keeps  you  from 
going  soft  with  complacency.  It  saves  you  from  turning 
into  a  fossil.  It  puts  you  on  the  defensive.  It  makes  you 
put  questions  to  yourself.  It  stimulates  you." 

"  Well,  now,  stimulate,"  said  Williams.  "  I  don't  object 
to  being  stimulated  by  things  I  read.  I  am  used  to  book 
reviews  in  which  the  reviewer  says  that  the  author  is  all 
wrong  in  his  facts  about  dehydrated  potatoes  as  a  pre 
ventive  of  war,  but  that  the  book  is  nevertheless  a  stim 
ulating  one.  Now,  I  may  be  finicky,  but  while  I  don't 
mind  being  stimulated  by  the  influence  of  dried  potatoes 
on  war,  I  resent  being  asked  to  meet  the  Challenge  of  the 
Dehydrated  Potato.  I  don't  like  to  have  potatoes  thrown 
up  to  me  like  that.  It  makes  me  want  to  throw  them 
back." 

"That  in  itself  is  a  good  sign,"  I  said.  "It  is  much 
better  than  stagnation." 

Williams  said  it  was  just  as  bad  in  the  monthly  publica 
tions.  He  picks  up  a  magazine  and  naturally  he  turns  first 
to  the  color  advertisements.  And  the  first  thing  he  knows 


198  WILLIAMS 

some  one  is  asking  him  how  about  that  Amco  Collapsible 
Double-Porcelained  Kitchen  Cabinet  which  he  should  have 
got  for  his  wife  long  ago  and  so  saved  her  3,400  steps  a 
day?  Once  upon  a  time  the  color  pages  used  to  suggest 
that  it  would  be  nice  if  Mrs.  Williams  owned  an  Amco 
Dishwasher.  Later  they  began  saying  that  it  was  Williams' 
duty  to  buy  his  wife  an  Amco.  But  nowadays  they  ask 
him  whether  he  is  meeting  the  challenge  of  the  Amco. 
Sometimes  the  challenge  is  reinforced  by  a  clear-eyed  citi 
zen  with  a  close-cropped  mustache  who  points  his  finger 
directly  at  Williams,  who  resents  the  gesture  acutely. 

"  It  gets  to  you  just  the  same,"  I  said. 

"  It  does  not,"  he  said  with  quite  a  flash  of  spirit.  "  It 
only  hurts  Mrs.  Williams.  I  should  have  bought  her  the 
Amco  long  ago  if  not  for  that  donkey  with  the  eloquent 
forefinger.  And  it's  just  as  bad  in  the  newspapers.  Have 
I  met  the  challenge  of  my  helpless  dependents  by  taking 
out  a  twenty-year  endowment  non-collapsible  policy?  Have 
I  met  the  challenge  of  the  Silent  Reaper  by  making  my 
will?  Am  I  keeping  faith  with  my  lungs?  Have  I  met 
the  challenge  of  my  pancreas?  Everybody  speaks  to  me 
as  though  I  were  walking  in  the  midst  of  a  crime  wave." 

Williams  said  it  was  even  worse  than  that.  Once  upon 
a  time  if  he  had  a  bad  headache  he  took  a  dose  of  bromides 
and  went  to  bed.  But  now  it  seems  that  to  meet  the  chal 
lenge  of  a  headache  you  must  get  your  tonsils  cut  out,  and 
the  proper  way  to  repel  a  challenge  from  lumbago  is  to 
have  your  teeth  pulled.  And  still  worse,  said  Williams. 
Nowadays,  if  your  head  doesn't  hurt  it  is  a  much  more 
sinister  thing  than  if  it  did,  and  if  you  work  hard  without 


TRUMPET  CALLS  TO  DUTY        199 

getting  tired,  it  means  that  something  dreadful  is  going  to 
happen.  So  it  isn't  enough  to  meet  challenges  as  they 
come  up.  You  must  go  out  hunting  for  trouble. 

"As  if  I  were  a  giddy  knight-errant,"  said  Williams, 
"  instead  of  a  busy  man  with  no  time  for  adventure." 

I  told  him  that  men  like  him  who  were  too  busy  to  do 
their  duty  by  their  higher  selves  and  by  humanity  were 
a  drag  on  progress. 

He  was  visibly  hurt.  He  said  that  he  was  sincerely  anx 
ious  to  do  his  share  in  the  building  of  a  new  world.  His 
mind  was  far  from  closed  to  new  ideas.  But  there  must 
be  a  limit,  mustn't  there?  After  all,  the  elementary  duties 
of  the  world  have  to  be  met.  And  where  would  we  land  if 
everybody  knocked  off  work  half  a  dozen  times  a  day  to 
meet  the  challenges  addressed  to  his  old-fashioned  methods? 
If  every  farmer  threw  aside  his  plow  to  answer  the  chal 
lenge  of  every  new  gasolene  tractor,  and  if  every  school 
teacher  threw  her  copybooks  into  the  waste-basket  to  meet 
the  challenge  of  the  New  Education,  what  would  happen? 

He  really  did  seem  to  have  a  point  there,  and  I  sug 
gested  that  perhaps  there  was  something  in  this  knight- 
errant  business  he  had  just  alluded  to.  There  ought  to  be 
a  special  class  in  society  whose  business  it  should  be  to 
meet  challenges  as  they  crop  up  in  the  weeklies  and  monthly 
advertising  sections.  And  while  the  scrap  was  on,  the  rest 
of  us  could  stick  to  our  work. 

He  thought  that  might  be  a  way  out,  but  he  was  not 
very  hopeful.  He  said  that  judging  from  the  number  of 
challenges  on  the  market,  the  greater  part  of  the  adult  work 
ing  population  must  be  employed  in  answering  them.  And 


200  WILLIAMS 

he  showed  me  a  circular  letter  from  the  school  he  sends 
his  children  to.  It  was  addressed  to  Parents  in  red  ink  and 
it  said,  "  How  Are  You  Answering  the  Challenge  of  Your 
Child?  " 

"  Well,  now,  child,"  said  Williams.  "  You  know  how  we 
all  of  us  meet  the  challenge  of  our  children.  We  let  them 
have  what  they  want.  It  comes  hard  to  meet  the  chal 
lenge  of  eight  pairs  of  shoes  a  year,  but  we  manage  some 
how.  It  comes  harder  to  meet  the  challenge  when  they 
grow  up  a  bit  and  want  to  be  helped  out  in  simple  quad 
ratics.  But  after  all,  if  you  feed  a  child  and  clothe  him 
and  look  after  him  when  he  is  ill  and  give  him  a  few  min 
utes  of  your  conversation  at  night  and  scatter  a  few  books 
around  the  house  for  him  to  run  into,  what  else  is  there 
to  do  in  the  way  of  meeting  the  challenge  of  childhood?  " 

He  went  on  to  say  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  busi 
ness  of  meeting  the  Challenge  of  the  Child  usually  kept 
him  and  Mrs.  Williams  so  occupied  that  they  had  little 
time  left  for  answering  the  Challenge  of  Labor,  and  the 
New  Spirit  in  the  Church,  and  Jugo-Slavia,  and  the  excess- 
profits  tax,  and  the  new  bran  compounds. 


THE  REINDEER  AND  THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE 

FOR  himself,  Williams  said,  the  problem  of  Santa 
Claus  is  no  longer  a  pressing  one.  Catherine,  his 
youngest,  is  well  into  her  tenth  year  and  has  been  for  some 
time  in  possession  of  the  real  facts  regarding  the  chimney 
and  the  reindeer.  How  she  found  out,  he  is  not  quite 
sure,  but  not  from  him  or  Mrs.  Williams.  Frankly,  they 
were  both  a  bit  old-fashioned  in  this  respect,  and  besides, 
they  wouldn't  have  had  the  heart. 

It  was  different,  said  Williams,  with  his  little  nephew, 
who  is  six,  and  who  learned  the  truth  about  St.  Nicholas 
the  other  day  from  his  mother,  a  thoroughly  conscientious 
young  woman  who  gives  a  great  deal  of  time  to  her  chil 
dren.  When  the  boy  heard  the  bitter  news  that  there  is 
no  Santa  Claus,  said  Williams,  he  sat  down  on  the  floor 
and  bawled.  Williams  thought  it  rather  hard  on  the  kid. 
They  might  have  waited  another  year  or  two. 

"Not  at  all,"  I  said.  "The  truth  will  never  hurt  a 
child." 

"Child!  "  said  Williams.  "A  mere  baby,  with  plenty 
of  time  ahead  of  him  to  shuffle  off  his  illusions." 

"  The  besetting  sin  of  the  past,"  I  said,  "  has  been  an 
excessive  tolerance  of  Superstition  among  the  very  young. 
There  was  the  Superstition  of  the  reindeer  down  the  chim 
ney.  There  was  the  Superstition  of  the  stork  through  th£ 
window.  There  was  the  Superstition  of  who  made  the 

201 


202  WILLIAMS 

earth  and  the  sky.  Happily  we  are  getting  rid  of  all 
of  them." 

Williams  sighed  and  said  his  sister-in-law  was  reading 
up  on  how  birds  and  fishes  are  born,  with  an  eye  to  his 
little  nephew. 

"  He  can't  begin  to  learn  too  soon/'  I  said.  "  Toleration 
of  the  present  ignorance  on  the  subject  would  be  a  crime 
against  the  child." 

"  You  are  too  hard,"  said  Williams. 

"  I  am  not  too  hard,"  I  said.  "  I  am  quite  ready  to 
make  exceptions.  I  believe,  for  instance,  that  after  people 
have  reached  the  voting  age  they  should  be  allowed  to 
believe  in  Santa  Claus.  That  is  the  time  when  we  must 
begin  to  respect  people's  illusions.  That  is  the  time  when 
tolerance  is  more  than  virtue,  when  it  becomes  a  necessity. 
Take,  for  instance,  a  severe  case  of  indigestion." 

"  Among  voters,  you  mean?  "  said  Williams. 

"  Both  among  children  and  voters,"  I  said.  "  Suppose 
your  little  nephew  saw  a  green  apple  and  was  tempted 
and  fell  and  proceeded  to  yowl  his  head  off.  Once  upon 
a  time  we  should  have  been  sorry  for  his  incoherent  emo 
tions.  But  your  sister-in-law,  being  a  modern  mother, 
quite  properly  insists  that  the  child  is  old  enough  to  tell 
just  where  the  pain  is,  and  having  received  his  dose,  he 
should  keep  quiet. 

"  Very  well.  But  suppose  your  nephew  grows  up  and 
publishes  a  volume  of  verse.  How  do  the  reviewers  treat 
him?  They  say  something  like  this: 

" '  There  are  even  times  when  Sandburg  is  unsure  about 
furnishing  the  clue  to  the  half-realized  and  half-expressed 


THE  REINDEER  203 

vagaries  of  the  imagination.  But  though  the  meaning  is 
not  always  clear,  there  is  no  mistaking  his  emotion.' 

"That  is  what  I  mean  by  tolerance.  If  you  insisted 
that  every  poet  at  all  times  must  say  plainly  what  is  the 
matter  with  him,  what  would  be  the  outlook  for  a  renascence 
of  letters  in  America?  " 

"  Clever,  but  specious,"  said  Williams. 

"  Fact,"  I  said ;  "  it  is  being  done  every  day.  Or  sup 
pose  your  little  nephew  got  hold  of  a  pencil  and  paper 
and  drew  an  elephant  with  three  legs  and  a  drastic  reversal 
in  the  position  of  the  tail  and  the  trunk.  Once  upon  a 
time  we  should  have  patted  him  on  the  head  and  left  him 
to  his  illusions.  To-day  your  sister-in-law  will  quite  prop 
erly  point  out  his  errors  and  not  permit  him  to  grow  up 
with  a  distorted  conception  of  the  universe.  Very  well. 
Suppose  now  your  nephew  grows  up  and  publishes  '  Civili 
zation  in  a  Nutshell.'  What  do  the  reviewers  say  about 
it?  They  say  this: 

"'Mr.  Williams,  in  his  "Civilization  in  a  Nutshell" 
has  made  the  most  notable  contribution  of  the  last  twenty 
years  to  historical  literature.  It  is  true  that  Mr.  Williams 
now  and  then  is  betrayed  into  statements  which  cannot 
altogether  pass  without  challenge.  He  speaks  of  Athens 
as  the  capital  of  Indo-China  and  refers  to  Luther's  early 
school  days  in  New  Orleans.  There  is  a  notable  descrip 
tion  of  Cleopatra  calling  up  Mark  Antony  on  the  telephone, 
in  which  the  amazing  vividness  of  style  does  not  alto 
gether  atone  for  the  deviation  from  historic  fact.  Hardly 
less  brilliant  is  the  picture  of  a  celebration  of  the  feast 
of  Ramadan  at  Mecca,  where  200,000  devout  Moslems 


204  WILLIAMS 

consume  the  flesh  of  io;ooo  swine,  not  counting  sundries. 
It  is  true  the  Ramadan  is  a  fast  and  not  a  feast,  and  that 
Mohammedans  abhor  pork,  yet  that  narrative  will  stand 
high  above  anything  in  Gibbon  or  Prescott,  in  its  thought- 
provoking  quality.' " 

"  I  should  think  it  would  provoke  a  good  deal  of  thought," 
said  Williams. 

"  That  again  is  tolerance,"  I  proceeded  utterly  disre 
garding  his  interruption.  "  Or  suppose  your  little  nephew 
asserts  that  little  boys  are  made  out  of  chocolate,  and  little 
girls  out  of  whipped  cream.  Your  sister-in-law  immediately, 
and  quite  properly,  reminds  him  of  the  ascertained  facts 
about  the  eggs  of  the  hen  and  the  turtle.  Very  well.  But 
suppose  your  little  nephew  grows  up  and  draws  pictures  of 
men  apparently  made  out  of  second-hand  anvils,  and  women 
apparently  fashioned  out  of  cantaloupe  crates.  What,  then, 
do  the  critics  say?  They  say  that  the  like  of  Mr.  Williams 's 
men  and  women  was  never  revealed  to  mortal  eye,  but  that 
we  must  accept  them  as  the  inner  vision  of  an  ultimate 
reality.  That  again  is  tolerance." 

"  Don't  they  sometimes  call  that  sort  of  thing  stimulat 
ing?  "  said  Williams. 

"  Quite  frequently,"  I  said.  "  Sometimes  it  is  stimulat 
ing.  Sometimes  it  is  thought-provoking.  Sometimes  it  is 
challenging.  The  point  is  this:  If  you  should  walk  across 
Broadway  in  the  accepted  fashion,  namely,  on  your  feet, 
you  would  be  making  no  original  contribution  to  the  soul- 
progress  of  the  race.  But  if  you  stood  on  your  head  in  front 
of  the  Wool  worth  Building,  you  would  be  a  stimulating, 
thought-provoking,  challenging  phenomenon  to  ten  thou- 


THE  REINDEER  205 

sand  people  and  the  traffic  cop.  That  is  why  we  must  be 
tolerant  with  grown-up  people  when  they  stand  on  their 
heads.  But  children  can  get  on  very  well  without  Santa 
Claus." 

"  I  don't  see  the  connection,"  said  Williams. 

"It  is  simple,"  I  said.  " We  have  taken  away  Santa 
Claus  from  the  children,  but  we  grown-ups  simply  cannot 
go  on  without  our  Santas,  that  is  to  say,  without  our  myths. 
Your  little  nephew  is  required,  quite  properly,  to  know  why 
he  does  things.  But  if  he  grows  up  to  be  a  Pragmatist 
he  need  not  know  where  he  is  going  so  long  as  he  is  on  his 
way;  otherwise  he  stagnates.  Your  little  nephew  should 
be  made  to  know  the  proper  compass  directions  for  an  ele 
phant's  trunk  and  tail.  But  for  us  it  is  quite  proper  to  be 
confronted  with  the  thought-provoking  statement  that  an 
elephant  picks  up  peanuts  with  his  tail ;  otherwise  we  might 
not  think  at  all.  Your  little  nephew  will  soon  learn  that  2 
and  2  make  4.  But  as  a  challenge  to  the  adult  mind  it  is 
quite  proper  to  say  that  2  and  2  make  5;  otherwise  we 
might  not  be  in  line  with  the  march  of  the  human  spirit. 
Our  forward  urge  to-day  is  largely  conditioned  by  a  faith 
in  Soviet  paradises  and  super-Shakespeares  coming  down 
the  chimney.  Who  pulls  us  forward  to-day  if  not  Dasher 
and  Prancer  and  Bonder  and  Blitzen?  Would  you  destroy 
our  faith  in  them?  " 

"  All  I  can  say  is,  it's  queer,"  said  Williams.  "  You  are 
tolerant  with  full-grown  men  and  women  and  you  come 
down  hard  on  my  kid  nephew." 

"  We  need  tolerance  more  than  he  does,"  I  said. 


THE  FILING  CABINET  AND  THE  CHILD 

IN  the  afternoon  of  May  27  I  was  fingering  through  the 
tray  marked  Clippings  on  my  desk,  in  search  of  some 
thing  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  said  the  other  day,  and  I  came 
across  an  unopened  letter.  The  postmark  was  somewhere  out 
West  and  the  date  was  January  16.  It  occurred  to  me  that 
if  that  letter  was  ever  going  to  be  answered  it  ought  to  be 
answered  soon.  Mr.  Shaw  might  wait.  He  would  soon  be 
speaking  again  without  question  and  one  of  two  things  would 
happen.  He  would  either  repeat  himself,  in  which  case 
there  would  be  nothing  lost  by  waiting;  or  he  very  prob 
ably  would  contradict  himself,  in  which  case  there  would  be 
a  distinct  gain  in  waiting. 

Besides,  I  was  not  at  all  sure  that  I  should  find  the  clip 
ping  with  Mr.  Shaw's  remarks  in  the  tray  marked  Clip 
pings.  That  is  the  disadvantage  of  distributing  things  into 
trays  marked  Clippings,  Incoming  Mail,  Outgoing  Mail, 
Topic  Suggestions,  etc.  It  makes  it  so  hard  to  find  any 
thing.  Under  the  older  system  of  letting  things  accumulate 
on  the  desk  I  am  convinced  that  I  should  have  come  across 
that  letter  of  January  by  the  middle  of  March  at  the  latest. 
Under  the  old  system  there  came  a  time  when  the  desk  and 
the  adjoining  table  and  the  surrounding  chairs  simply  would 
hold  no  more.  Once  so  often  a  general  housecleaning  became 
imperative,  in  the  course  of  which  pretty  nearly  everything 
was  sure  to  turn  up. 

206 


THE  FILING  CABINET  207 

Not  so  under  the  efficiency  system.  Everything  being 
presumably  just  where  it  ought  to  be,  it  would  show  lack 
of  confidence  in  efficiency  methods  to  look  for  an  unopened 
letter  in  the  Clippings  tray,  for  a  pair  of  movie  tickets  in 
the  Foreign  Correspondence  tray,  or  for  the  matches  in  the 
Topic  Suggestions  tray,  where  such  things  usually  find  their 
way.  At  the  present  moment  I  have  a  strong  suspicion  that 
Mr.  Shaw's  remarks  are  somewhere  in  the  Odds  and  Ends 
tray,  and  I  shall  find  them  some  day  when  I  am  hunting 
for  an  item  on  Footbinding  in  China. 

The  letter  of  January  16,  when  opened,  turned  out  to  be 
a  printed  questionnaire  from  the  Civic  Forum  of  a  certain 
Western  town  requesting  a  concise  statement  of  my  views 
on  the  New  Education.  It  said  that  similar  requests  had 
gone  out  to  three  thousand  other  people  all  over  the  coun 
try  and  the  answers  would  be  published  in  the  form  of  a 
tabulated  statement  arranged  by  geographical  divisions, 
States,  and  communities,  ranked  according  to  population 
and  per  capita  wealth. 

The  old  system  of  letting  things  accumulate  on  the  desk 
and  the  chairs  instead  of  distributing  them  into  trays  had 
another  advantage.  It  was  a  great  time  saver.  By  putting 
things  into  trays  and  clearing  them  out  every  week,  one 
does  things  and  answers  things  that  need  not  be  answered 
or  done  at  all  if  one  only  waits  long  enough.  People  say, 
and  quite  rightly,  that  the  history  of  the  Great  War  cannot 
be  written  for  a  good  many  years  to  come  because  we  are 
too  near  to  the  war  for  the  right  perspective.  I  think  the 
same  thing  is  true  of  Topic  Suggestions  and  Incoming  Mail. 
For  instance,  the  other  day  in  cleaning  up  a  chair  for  a 


208  WILLIAMS 

visitor  to  sit  on  I  came  across  a  February  magazine  con 
taining  an  article  on  the  Sex  War  which  I  had  been  urgently 
requested  to  read  by  the  young  woman  librarian  uptown. 
As  I  glanced  at  the  February  article  on  Sex  War  on  May  21, 
it  no  longer  seemed  necessary  to  read  it.  In  the  first  place, 
what  the  author  said  wasn't  true.  In  the  second  place,  the 
author  had  published  in  tHe  April  number  of  another  maga 
zine  an  article  on  Woman  Insurgent  which  contradicted  all 
that  he  had  said  in  February.  So  here  was  a  distinct  case 
of  time  saving. 

I  wondered  if  the  same  thing  wasn't  true  about  the  New 
Education.  The  letter  asking  for  my  views  on  the  New 
Education  was  dated,  as  I  have  said,  January  16.  It  was 
now  May  27.  It  was  obvious  that  if  I  tried  to  discuss  the 
New  Education  as  it  was  in  the  middle  of  January  the 
views  I  expressed  would  now  be  obsolete.  I  was  convinced 
that  several  revolutions  in  educational  theory  must  have 
taken  place  since  January,  though  how  many  and  of  what 
nature  I  could  not  say.  All  through  March  and  the  greater 
part  of  April  I  had  been  traveling  about  the  country  with 
only  intermittent  access  to  the  newspapers.  After  that  I 
had  been  away  on  vacation  for  some  weeks  and  the  only 
newspaper  we  could  get  was  Mr.  Hearst's  Evening  Journal 
of  the  day  after  to-morrow. 

My  first  impulse,  on  the  basis  of  such  newspaper  reading 
as  I  was  able  to  accomplish,  would  have  been  to  say  that 
nothing  new  in  education  had  happened  either  by  States  or 
by  geographical  divisions.  In  Ogden,  Utah,  I  discovered 
that  the  Captain  and  the  Katzenjammer  Kids  were  still  at 
work  on  the  problems  confronting  them  in  New  York  City 


THE  FILING  CABINET  209 

in  April,  1903,  and  up  in  Maine  in  the  summer  of  1911.  In 
Denver  I  learned  that  the  Joneses  were  still  keeping  it  up, 
and  down  on  Long  Island  I  saw  by  the  papers  that  in  spite 
of  the  enormous  increase  in  the  cost  of  lumber  and  conse 
quent  stagnation  in  the  building  industry,  the  supply  of 
rolling  pins  in  the  comic  strips  showed  no  sign  of  exhaus 
tion.  Popular  education  in  a  vital  sense  was  apparently 
unchanged. 

Apparently.  At  heart  I  knew  that  unless  the  entire  tem 
per  and  habit  of  the  country  had  altered,  several  pedagogical 
revolutions  must  have  taken  place  without  my  being  aware 
of  the  fact.  I  recalled  how  swift  and  radical  hitherto  have 
been  the  transformations  of  educational  theory  and  practice. 
It  was  right  that  this  should  be  so.  We  all  know  that  the 
secret  of  education  is  to  win  and  hold  the  attention  of  the 
child.  And  we  all  know  that  nothing  so  wins  the  attention 
of  the  child,  or,  for  that  matter,  of  the  adult,  as  speed  and 
variety.  School  can  never  become  monotonous  to  the  child 
who  comes  into  class  every  morning  not  knowing  whether 
teacher  will  be  sitting  on  the  floor  in  accordance  with  a  new 
Psychology  of  the  Child  Soul  or  practising  a  New  Approach 
into  the  Juvenile  Mind  by  doing  handsprings  on  the  window 
sill. 

Whatever  else  we  are,  we  are  not  a  stagnant  nation.  Our 
educational  systems  flourish  in  rapid  succession.  Fre 
quently  several  educational  systems  flourish  side  by  side  in 
the  mind  of  the  child  and  sometimes  on  top  of  each  other.  I 
have  known  of  families  with  two  children  aged,  say,  twelve 
and  nine  and  a  half,  in  which  the  elder  practises  a  system 
of  penmanship  sloping  from  left  to  right,  while  the  younger 


2io  WILLIAMS 

writes  straight  up  and  down.  It  is  not  a  rare  occurrence  to 
find  the  same  child  who,  happening  to  fall  in  the  transition 
period  between  two  systems  of  penmanship,  will  simultane 
ously  slant  from  left  to  right  and  go  straight  up  and  down. 
This  involves  a  certain  loss  in  legibility. 

Sometimes  I  cannot  help  wondering  whether  there  isn't 
more  than  one  reason  for  this  unceasing  experimentation  in 
educational  methods.  No  doubt  the  main  reason  is  our  de 
sire  to  keep  our  children  in  line  with  progress.  But  also 
there  is  a  certain  restlessness  on  the  part  of  the  parents. 
"  In  other  words,"  one  old-fashioned  critic  has  remarked, 
"  it  is  not  only  the  children  who  fidget."  A  zest  for  ex 
perimentation  is  one  of  the  notable  traits  of  the  modern  tem 
per,  and  one  can  always  find  a  child  to  experiment  upon. 

Consequently  I  must  hasten  to  send  in  my  views  on  the 
New  Education  to  the  Civic  Forum  out  West;  provided, 
that  is,  the  letter  doesn't  get  lost  in  the  tray  marked  Out 
going  Mail — Urgent. 


VOICE  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

I  AM  [he  said]  a  reporter  on  a  morning  paper.  One  day 
my  city  editor  hit  upon  an  idea  no  one  had  ever  had 
before.  He  sent  me  out  to  interview  a  number  of  citizens 
and  find  out  what  were  the  six  best  novels  in  all  literature. 
I  was  to  interview  people  of  all  sorts  so  as  to  make  the  result 
truly  representative. 

I  went  to  see  the  Collector  of  External  Revenue,  and 
asked  him  what  were  the  six  greatest  novels  ever  written. 
He  was  glancing  over  the  Past  Performances  on  the  sporting 
page,  but  he  threw  the  paper  aside,  invited  me  to  sit  down, 
and  gazed  out  of  the  window. 

"  My  favorite  novel,"  he  said,  "  has  always  been  f  Tom 
Jones.'  After  that  I  should  place  '  Vanity  Fair/  which  I 
consider  the  best  thing  Dickens  ever  wrote;  '  Ivanhoe,' 
1  Huckleberry  Finn ' — do  you  remember  that  story  about 
the  grave  of  Christopher  Columbus? — '  Pere  Goriot,'  by  that 
fellow — what's  his  name?  " 

I  suggested  Balzac. 

"  Bawlzac,  that's  the  man,  and  l  Anna  Karenina,'  by 
Tolstoy." 

I  thanked  him  and  he  said,  "  Not  at  all,"  and  picked  up 
the  sporting  page  and  put  his  feet  in  their  usual  place  on 
the  desk. 

From  him  I  went  to  Mr.  Montrose  Jones,  the  celebrated 
composer  of  "  The  Yucatan  Rag."  He  pondered  my  ques- 

311 


2i2  WILLIAMS 

tion   while   the   Italian    bootblack   finished   polishing   his 
shoes. 

"Never  since  I  have  thought  on  the  subject,"  he  said, 
"  have  I  had  the  slightest  doubt  that  '  Tom  Jones '  holds 
first  place  among  all  works  of  imaginative  literature.    After  • 
that  I  should  say  my  favorites  are  '  Vanity  Fair/  '  Ivanhoe,'  i 
.by  Charles  Dickens,  £  Huckleberry  Finn' — do  you  recall 
that  incident  about  the  frog  that  was  filled  up  with  buck 
shot? — and,  let  me  see." 

I  suggested  "  Pere  Goriot,"  by  Balzac. 
"  Just  what  I  was  trying  to  recall,"  he  said.    "  How  many 
is  that?    Five?    Well—" 

I  suggested  that  "  Anna  Karenina,"  by  Tolstoy,  has  been 
well  thought  of. 

"  Right,"  he  said.  "  These  are  the  six  authors  whom  I 
should  never  think  of  omitting  from  my  library." 

I  thanked  him  and  he  said,  "  Don't  mention  it,"  and  rang 
for  the  barber  and  the  manicure.  From  him  I  went  to  Miss 
Genevieve  Desmond,  principal  woman  in  "  The  Girl  from 
Gallipoli." 

She  looked  up  from  her  copy  of  Munsey's.  "  It  is  always 
so  hard  to  pick  out  the  six  best  from  a  world  of  excellent 
novels,"  she  said.  "  And,  of  course,  I  don't  know  what 
scholars  and  such  people  may  think,  but  my  own  opinion 
is  that  Dickens's  '  Tom  Jones '  has  never  been  surpassed. 
After  that,  but  only  a  little  bit  behind,  I  should  put 
*  Huckleberry  Finn ' — do  you  remember  that  story  of  the 
French  waitress  who  could  only  understand  English? — 
'  Ivanhoe,' '  Vanity  Fair  '  " — she  hesitated. 

"  Of  course,"  I  said,  "  there  is  Balzac's  "  Pere  Goriot." 


VOICE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  213 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  "  and  for  sixth  place  I  am  undecided  be 
tween  Tolstoy  and  l  Les  Miserables.'  " 

Such  unanimity  of  opinion  was  gratifying,  though  I  was 
afraid  it  would  look  rather  monotonous  in  print.  However, 
the  truth  was  what  I  was  after,  and  as  a  man  of  some  edu 
cation  as  distinguished  from  a  mere  reporter  I  was  gratified 
at  the  wide  diffusion  of  high  literary  taste.  My  last  inter 
view  was  with  the  Professor  of  Classical  Paleography  at  the 
University.  He  put  aside  his  copy  of  Plato  in  the  original 
Greek  and  said: 

"  The  six  novels  which  I  have  found  most  entrancing  are 
'  Sherlock  Holmes/  '  Lady  Audley's  Secret,'  Miss  Corelli's 
'  Romance  of  Two  Worlds,'  *  David  Harum/  '  The  Lady  in 
White/  and  l  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii.'  I  invariably  read 
myself  to  sleep  with  the  last  named  book." 

The  city  editor,  however,  discarded  Professor  Blankley's 
list  as  evidently  misrepresentative  of  the  public's  taste. 

I  am  all  the  more  inclined  to  agree  with  the  findings  of 
my  newspaper  friend  because  they  coincide  with  my  own  im 
pressions.  As  far  as  I  can  recall,  no  city  editor  has  had  the 
original  idea  of  interviewing  people  on  the  six  greatest  plays 
ever  written,  but  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  a  symposium  on 
the  subject,  participated  in  by  Mr.  Charles  F.  Murphy,  Tris 
Speaker,  the  Superintendent  of  the  Municipal  Lodging 
House,  and  Mr.  Henry  Ford,  would  give  us  the  following 
list:  "  CEdipus  Rex,"  "  Hamlet,"  "  The  Merchant  of  Ven 
ice,"  "  Faust,"  "  The  Misanthrope,"  and  "  The  School  for 
Scandal,"  while  a  small  minority  represented  by  President 
Lowell  and  Colonel  House  would  hold  out  for  "  Charley's 
Aunt "  and  "  A  Trip  to  Chinatown." 


214  WILLIAMS 

This  is  merely  an  opinion,  but  it  is  based  on  the  fact  tHat 
the  Modern  Theaters,  which  are  continually  being  organized 
for  the  benefit  of  the  working  classes  and  the  people  of  the 
East  Side,  devote  themselves  exclusively  to  the  Greek  drama, 
Synge,  Wedekind,  and  Giacosa — the  last  name  appearing  in 
a  variety  of  spellings — whereas  President  Wilson  went  only 
twice  to  the  theater  in  New  York,  so  far  as  I  can  recall,  and 
the  first  time  he  went  to  see  "  The  Pink  Lady,"  and  the  sec 
ond  time  he  saw  "  Grumpy."  Now,  "  Grumpy  "  was  good 
fun,  but,  after  all,  there  were  serious  plays  running  in  New 
York  at  the  time  and  I  thought  that  Presidents  of  republics 
always  went  to  the  Comedie  Frangaise  or  some  such  high 
brow  institution.  Precisely  because  we  have  no  Comedie 
Frangaise  I  thought  the  whole  weight  of  official  prestige 
should  be  thrown  in  favor  of  such  timid  approaches  as  we 
have  made  to  the  real  thing.  I  imagine  that  M.  Millerand, 
as  a  man,  would  rather  go  to  see  Fred  Stone  than  Walter 
Hampden,  but  what  are  Presidents  for  if  not  for  the  pur 
pose  of  pressing  buttons  at  the  opening  of  fairs,  and  laying 
cornerstones,  and  encouraging  the  drama?  However,  that 
is  not  the  point. 

The  point  is  rather  that  when  it  comes  to  picking  the  six 
best  examples  of  anything,  it  is  the  plain  people  who  stand 
up  for  the  highest  and  sanest  that  men  have  written  and 
practised;  and  it  is  the  college  professors  who  are  always 
kicking  over  the  traces.  I  can  conceive  no  more  dangerous 
force  in  nature  than  a  professor  of  economics  or  sociology 
before  a  Board  of  Investigation.  He  is  apt  to  say  anything. 
Ask  Tris  Speaker,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  "  Tom  Jones  " 
is  the  best  novel;  that  women  on  the  whole  should  not  vote; 


VOICE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  21'$ 

that  the  proper  number  of  children  in  a  modern  family  is 
six;  that  $1,200  a  year  is  enough  for  any  family  to  live  on; 
that  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  are  the  basis  of  every 
sound  public-school  education;  and  that  divorce  should  be 
made  much  more  difficult.  Ask  your  professor  of  economics, 
and  he  will  demand  a  minimum  of  $5,000  a  year,  the  sus 
pension  of  marriage,  the  abolition  of  the  family — the  future 
to  be  provided  for  perhaps  by  adopting  the  little  boys  and 
girls  of  the  Chinese.  Your  baseball  player  would  probably 
say  that  his  favorite  virtue  is  self-sacrifice,  his  favorite  char 
acter  in  history  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  his  favorite  recrea 
tion  taking  the  baby  out  in  a  perambulator.  Professor 
Smith  will  say  that  his  favorite  virtue  is  insubordination, 
his  favorite  character  is  Caesar  Borgia,  and  his  favorite 
recreation  is  reading  Ibsen's  "  Ghosts." 

The  only  thing  that  occurs  to  me  is  that  both  men  would 
be  just  about  equally  sincere.  In  speaking  for  publication 
most  of  us  say  what  we  are  expected  to  say,  and  if  we  don't 
our  statements  will  be  rectified  in  the  interests  of  good  copy. 
You  can  see  for  yourself  that  there  would  be  nothing  to  a 
headline  like  "  Baseball  Player  Likes  Movies,"  or  "  College 
Professor  Enjoys  Hamlet." 


ADVENTURES  OF  THE  LITERAL  MINDED 
PEDESTRIAN 

NOT  in  the  way  of  boastfulness,  but  on  the  contrary, 
with  a  definite  sense  of  regret  at  his  own  shortcom 
ings,  he  would  allude  now  and  then  to  his  almost  total  lack 
of  acquaintance  with  American  Poetry  of  the  Harding  era. 
That  fact  was  clearly  established  before  we  had  covered  half 
the  distance  up  town. 

As  we  came  out  into  the  street  and  into  the  premature 
twilight  of  an  afternoon  heavy  with  the  promise  of  snow  he 
remarked  on  the  fairy  spectacle  of  the  Hudson  Terminal 
Building,  the  Telegraph  Building  and  the  eastern  wall  of 
Broadway,  their  fronts  ablaze  with  golden  lights.  Only  he 
did  not  call  it  fairyland.  Neither  did  he  speak  of  5,000 
wax  tapers  glowing  about  the  altars  of  business,  as  possibly 
Amy  Lowell  might.  Neither  did  he  speak  of  the  wanton 
city,  arraying  herself  in  her  night  jewels,  as  Carl  Sandburg 
might. 

Instead,  he  said: 

"  Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  what  a  considerable  part  of 
business  nowadays  is  done  after  business  hours?  During 
the  day  a  person  goes  through  a  large  number  of  motions 
which  I  suppose  are  necessary  to  business.  He  reads  his 
letters  in  the  morning  and  dictates  answers,  but  only  the 
less  important  ones.  Those  letters  that  call  for  considera 
tion  and  important  decisions  he  postpones  till  the  early  eve- 

216 


LITERAL  MINDED  PEDESTRIAN    217 

ning.  He  calls  people  up  on  the  telephone  and  is  called 
up  on  the  telephone.  He  attends  conferences  in  which  some 
questions  are  settled  but  more  questions  are  raised;  these 
he  postpones  until  evening  to  think  over.  He  attends  pro- 
i  longed  luncheons  at  which  business  is  discussed  with  very 
much  the  same  result.  He  interviews  customers  and  clients 
and  gets  the  data  for  contracts  and  briefs  which  he  develops 
after  5  o'clock,  or  maybe  6  o'clock.  It  is  only  when  the 
secretaries  and  stenographers  have  gone  home,  and  the  tele 
phone  stops  ringing,  and  people  stop  coming  in  to  interrupt 
on  the  pretext  of  business,  that  a  business  man  really  finds 
the  time  to  think  and  decide.  The  streets  grow  quiet,  the 
office  boys  stop  quarreling  in  the  anteroom  and  go  home,  and 
the  office  takes  on  a  religious  hush.  Or  it  is  very  much 
like  my  wife  at  home — when  she  has  put  the  children  to 
bed.  That  is  the  only  time,  she  says,  she  can  sit  down  and 
recall  that  she  has  a  mind  capable  of  functioning.  You 
know  how  it  is  with  your  artists  and  authors.  They  do 
their  work  in  summer  up  in  the  Maine  woods.  Well,  we 
can't  afford  to  get  away  for  four  months,  so  we  stay  in  the 
office  after  six.  It  is  rather  interesting,  isn't  it,  to  think  of 
several  thousand  men  behind  these  brilliantly  lighted  win 
dows  just  settling  down  to  their  day's  work?  " 

An  important  bit  of  business  in  connection  with  the  Help 
Wanted,  Female,  columns  took  us  to  one  of  the  newspaper 
offices  on  Park  Row.  We  were  for  three  or  four  minutes 
part  of  the  solid,  human  mass  surging  homeward  toward 
Brooklyn  Bridge.  But  my  companion  did  not  identify  him 
self  with  the  mighty  Pulse  Beat  of  the  City.  He  did  not, 
on  the  one  hand,  rise  to  Walt  Whitman's  joy  in  the  myriad 


2i  8  WILLIAMS 

faces  of  Mannahatta.  Neither  did  he  succumb  to  a  latter- 
day  hatred  for  the  brutal  machine  called  Downtown  which 
sucks  in  its  human  fuel  every  morning  and  spews  out  the 
ashes  and  cinders  every  evening — across  Brooklyn  Bridge. 

He  said: 

"  Brooklyn  is  really  an  extraordinary  place.  It  is  full  of 
all  kinds  of  people,  whereas  you  fellows  in  the  writing  line 
are  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  the  Brooklyn  type.  There 
isn't  such  a  type.  Or  why  would  they  be  buying  half  a 
dozen  different  evening  papers?  Do  you  see  how  the  news 
boy  knows  them  as  they  come  at  him  and  jerks  out  his 
Journal  or  World  or  Globe  or  Mail?  And  if  he  doesn't  rec 
ognize  you,  see  what  he  does.  He  sizes  you  up.  He  shoots 
just  one  glance  at  you  and  whips  out  a  Sun  from  under  his 
left  arm.  Have  you  ever  stopped  to  think  what  difference 
it  makes  whether  a  Brooklyn  man  asks  for  a  World  or  a 
Sun?  Not  to  mention  the  Eagle.  It  means  that  he  feels 
one  way  or  another  about  the  Treaty,  and  Mr.  Harding, 
and  the  labor  unions,  and  Fontaine  Fox,  and  Maurice  Ket- 
ten,  and  the  Bolsheviks,  and  almost  anything  you  can  think 
of.  It  is  really  striking  what  an  enormous  number  of  people 
live  in  Brooklyn." 

Strange,  I  thought,  that  a  man  should  be  walking  in  the 
crowd  and  yet  be  so  apparently  dull  to  the  Soul  of  the 
Crowd,  as  it  is  frequently  called  in  the  weekly  publications 
— should  be  so  dull  to  the  colossal  Rhythm  of  Democracy. 
That  was  his  neglected  education. 

As  we  crossed  City  Hall  Park  and  turned  up  Broadway 
he  failed  to  remark  on  the  pillar  of  mist  which  is  Broadway 
in  the  distance  between  its  high  walls.  He  observed  that 


LITERAL  MINDED  PEDESTRIAN    219 

the  streets  were  on  the  whole  cleaner  than  they  used  to  be. 
He  thought  that  the  city  as  a  whole  was  improving  in  that 
respect,  and  he  wondered  whether  we  oughtn't  to  attribute 
to  this  fact  the  steadily  decreasing  rate  in  infant  mortality. 
He  thought  the  automobile  killings  were  horrible,  and  sug 
gested  the  time  might  soon  come  when  motor  traffic  below 
Fourteenth  Street  would  be  prohibited,  at  least  passenger 
traffic.  He  did  not  see  that  the  business  of  the  city  would 
come  to  a  standstill  if  everybody  had  to  use  the  Subway  or 
the  "  L  "  down  town.  He  would  prohibit  the  use  of  the 
automobile  for  passengers  everywhere  on  the  East  Side.  No 
point  in  that  section  is  more  than  a  ten-minute  walk  from 
the  "  L  "  and  the  children  had  to  play  somewhere. 

A  little  above  Canal  Street  we  struck  the  southward  bound 
crowd,  from  the  garment  factories.  Though  it  was  quite 
a  task  making  headway  against  the  crowd,  he  never  once 
spoke  of  ourselves  as  breasting  the  torrent  of  weary  life 
flowing  back  from  the  factories  towards  the  tenements.  I 
suppose  if  the  man's  life  depended  on  it  he  could  not  have 
framed  a  generalization  or  a  metaphor.  The  gift  for  iden 
tifying  himself  with  the  Life  Forces  was  denied  him. 

He  said,  instead: 

"  If  I  came  home  as  tired  as  most  of  these  girls  and  men 
do,  I  think  all  I  could  manage  would  be  just  to  climb  into 
bed.  I  suppose  some  of  them  do,  for  that  matter.  And  I 
imagine  there  are  a  good  many  others  who  have  tasks  await 
ing  them  at  home,  like  preparing  supper,  or  a  sick  mother 
to  look  after,  or  letters  to  answer  from  unhappy  relatives  out 
in  Poland,  or  Calabria,  or  Armenia  even.  But  just  by  look 
ing  I  couldn't  tell  which  of  these  girls  are  going  home  to  a 


220  WILLIAMS 

cheerless  night,  and  which  of  them  have  engagements  for 
the  theater,  or  the  movies,  or  a  Socialist  meeting,  of  which 
I  understand  there  are  a  great  many.  Frequently  it  is  a 
combination  meeting,  concert  and  ball.  There  is  also  a  good 
deal  of  miscellaneous  dancing  on  the  East  Side,  and  there 
are  the  singing  societies  and  lectures;  and  of  course  the 
evening  schools." 

He  thought  there  were  a  great  many  people  on  the  East 
Side. 

Concerning  Central  Park  he  did  not  say  that  it  was  an 
innocent  smile  on  the  painted  face  of  Babylon.  He  said 
that  the  electric  lights  were  a  hardship  on  young  people 
who  had  no  other  place  to  do  their  courting.  We  parted 
at  Seventy-second  Street. 

"  It  has  been  an  experience,"  I  said. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  it  was  a  nice  walk." 


OUR  HIGHER  SELVES 

WILLIAMS  was  not  at  all  sure  that  thirty  minutes  a 
day  devoted  to  "  10,000  Notable  Facts,"  in  limp 
leather  binding,  would  equip  a  man  for  the  purposes  of  so 
cial  intercourse. 

"  You  think,"  I  said,  "  that  10,000  facts  are  not  enough 
to  hold  the  ladies  spellbound?  " 

Williams  said  10,000  facts  were  too  much.  He  thought 
ten  facts  would  be  much  better,  and  two  or  three  would  be 
ideal.  And  he  cited  a  recent  experience. 

He  said  it  was  just  an  ordinarily  intelligent  after-dinner 
conversation.  It  touched,  among  other  things,  on  two  hemi 
spheres,  two  sexes,  three  best-selling  novels,  two  significant 
plays,  three  generations  (the  young,  the  young  at  heart,  and 
the  old),  three  epochs  in  history  (ancient,  medieval,  and 
modern),  two  possible  ways  of  paying  off  the  German  in 
demnity,  two  divorce  cases  in  the  newspapers,  examined  not 
at  all  for  their  sordid  details  but  for  their  significance  as  so 
cial  documents,  two  striking  examples  of  spiritistic  phenom 
ena,  three  possible  solutions  for  the  Russian  problem,  with 
a  few  casual  references  to  Shantung,  literary  censorship,  and 
Eugene  Debs. 

I  suggested  that,  even  at  that  rate,  10,000  facts,  if  judi 
ciously  employed,  might  suffice. 

"  The  trouble,"  said  Williams,  "  is  that  half  of  the  com 
pany  seemed  to  have  mastered  5,000  facts  out  of  the  10,000, 

221 


222  WILLIAMS 

and  the  other  half  of  the  company  had  the  other  5,000  at 
their  finger  tips.  And  so  their  minds  did  not  meet." 

In  the  case  of  German  reparations,  said  Williams,  it  hap 
pened  that  the  lady  on  his  left  was  convinced  that  the  Allied 
policy  was  headed  straight  for  disaster  and  she  set  out  to 
prove  it  to  a  man  across  the  table  who  was  of  the  opinion 
that  Lloyd  George  was  not  half  severe  enough.  She  called 
his  attention  to  a  special  dispatch  in  the  New  York  Call 
which  showed  that  Germany  had  already  paid,  in  coal  and 
ferro-manganese,  more  than  twice  the  value  of  all  the  fac 
tories  destroyed  in  Northern  France. 

The  gentleman  across  the  table  replied  that  he  made  it  a 
point  not  to  read  the  Call,  as  he  abhorred  its  political  views 
and  distrusted  its  news.  On  the  other  hand,  he  begged  to 
remind  her  of  a  recent  item  in  the  New  York  Times  which 
showed  that  Germany  was  secretly  drilling  an  army  of  a  mil 
lion  men  for  whom  Krupps  was  busy  night  and  day  provid 
ing  heavy  guns  and  trench  mortarg.  The  lady  said  that  she 
never  believed  anything  she  saw  in  the  Times  touching  on 
either  Germany  or  Russia.  What  really  mattered,  she  went 
on  to  say,  was  the  present  status  of  the  Silesian  sugar  beet 
refineries  as  described  on  page  13,  column  6,  of  the  Phila 
delphia  Public  Ledger,  just  below  the  victrola  ad.  Her 
opponent  replied  that  the  Public  Ledger  seldom  came  his 
way,  but  that  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Burlington  (Iowa) 
Hawkeye  revealed  an  extraordinary  increase  in  the  output 
of  cotton  hosiery  at  Dresden  and  Leipzig  which  must  be 
read  in  connection  with  the  claims  put  forward  by  the  Ger 
mans  in  London.  Williams 's  neighbor  retorted  that  the 
Hawkeye  letter  was  news  to  her,  even  assuming  that  it  was 


OUR  HIGHER  SELVES  223 

genuine  and  that  the  writer  knew  what  he  was  talking  about. 

Williams  said  that  if  there  is  anything  more  amazing  than 
the  intimate  knowledge  of  the  inner  history  of  the  court  of 
Montenegro  displayed  by  some  people,  it  is  their  ignorance 
of  who  is  the  present  Governor  of  New  York  State.  The 
trouble  with  facts  would  seem  to  be  the  same  as  with  farm 
crops.  The  total  output  is  enormous,  but  the  distribution  is 
exceedingly  uneven.  Not  long  ago  he  met  an  ambitious 
young  school  teacher  from  one  of  the  high  schools  who  had 
never  heard  of  G.  K.  Chesterton.  Only  the  other  day  a 
New  York  Alderman  said  that  the  name  of  Einstein  was 
new  to  him.  Surely,  said  Williams,  that  charming  school- 
marm  must  sometimes  glance  through  the  department  store 
advertisements,  and  that  Alderman  must  look  at  the  stock 
quotations  or  the  sporting  page.  In  that  case,  how  could 
they  have  missed  Chesterton  and  Einstein?  It  made  him 
wonder  if  anybody  ever  does  read  the  newspapers. 

I  suggested  that  people  do;  but  remember  only  what  they 
wish  to. 

"  But  that,"  said  Williams,  "  is  precisely  the  trouble  with 
10,000  Facts.  It  permits  too  wide  a  choice.  There  is  so 
much  for  everybody  to  know  that  nearly  everybody  in  any 
group  of  intelligent  people  knows  something  different.  You 
would  suppose  that  if  there  is  any  subject  on  which  there 
was  a  common  fund  of  information  it  would  be  the  movies. 
But  when  we  took  up,  at  this  same  dinner  party,  the  in 
fluence  of  motion  pictures  on  popular  morals,  we  ran  up 
against  extraordinary  differences  not  in  opinion,  which  would 
be  natural  enough,  but  in  facts." 

Williams  believes,  and  so  told  the  company  at  dinner, 


224  WILLIAMS 

that  the  movie  is  undermining  civilization.  He  told  them 
that  just  now  on  his  way  up  from  the  subway  station  he  had 
walked  five  blocks,  and  he  thought  he  was  walking  through 
Babylon  at  its  worst.  One  movie  theater  offered  to  tell 
him,  for  the  modest  sum  of  25  cents,  the  Truth  About  Hus 
bands.  Half  a  block  further  on  he  could  have  found  out 
everything  about  the  Price  Women  Pay.  After  that  it  was 
something  about  the  Sins  of  the  Fathers.  After  that  it  was 
one  long  gallery  in  which  everything  was  wrong — wives, 
husbands,  children,  doctors,  clergymen,  railroad  presidents. 
Williams  said  he  never  goes  to  the  movies,  but  how  in  the 
face  of  the  facts  could  the  thing  be  anything  but  a  menace? 

The  man  across  the  table  who  knew  all  about  Lloyd 
George,  leaned  forward  and  asked  Williams  if  he  had  seen 
the  screen  version  of  "  Way  Down  East." 

"  No,"  said  Williams. 

"  Or  '  Over  the  Hill '?  " 

"  No,"  said  Williams. 

"  Or  c  Black  Beauty  '?  " 

"  No,"  said  Williams;  and  being  on  the  whole,  of  a  dis 
position  far  from  bigotry  or  prejudice,  he  could  not  help 
wondering  whether  he  ought  not  to  have  made  himself  safer 
on  the  moral  facts  of  the  movie  problem.  But  with  fifteen 
million  linear  feet  of  film  released  every  year,  what  was  a 
man  to  do? 

I  told  him  that  I  failed  to  see  that  he  had  any  cause  for 
regret. 

"  Not  regret  talking  for  ten  minutes  at  a  stretch  about 
something  I  knew  very  little  about?  "  said  Williams. 

It  seemed  absurd  that  I  should  have  to  point  out  to  Wil- 


OUR  HIGHER  SELVES  225 

liams  the  fundamental  mistake  he  was  making.  He  was  con 
fusing  facts  with  conversation;  at  least  as  conversation  is 
understood  and  practised  by  us  of  the  intelligent  classes. 
I  pointed  out  to  him  that  it  was  different  with  the  lower 
classes,  whose  conversation  is  built  upon  a  few  universal 
facts  like  the  weather,  or  food  profiteers,  or  children,  or  the 
common  physical  ailments.  As  a  result,  the  dinner-talk  of 
the  masses  is  apt  to  be  somewhat  lacking  in  dramatic  con 
flict,  but  it  does  manage  to  get  fairly  close  to  the  truth  of 
things. 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  say  the  lower  classes,"  said  Wil 
liams. 

"  Then  you  did  get  around  to  the  weather?  "  I  said. 

Williams  said  that  they  got  through  with  the  war  of  the 
sexes  and  the  German  indemnity  by  9  o'clock,  when  some 
one  brought  up  the  subject  of  an  open  winter.  Thereupon 
his  hostess  smiled  happily  at  her  husband  and  everybody 
began  to  agree  with  everybody  else.  When  Williams  said 
good-by  at  10:30,  the  lady  who  knew  all  about  Lenin's  agri 
cultural  reforms  in  Turkestan  was  telling  the  man  who  knew 
everything  about  Krupps'  secret  dividends  that  we  had  yet 
to  discover  a  substitute  for  the  old  mustard  plaster  in  the 
treatment  of  elementary  colds.  Williams  said  he  had  to 
tear  himself  away. 


THE  DANGEROUS  AGE 

WE  had  been  talking  about  London,  and  the  Allies  and 
the  Germans,  and  two  hundred  and  twenty-six  bil 
lion  marks,  and  seven  and  a  half  billion  dollars,  and  twenty- 
four  million  tons  of  coal,  and  12  per  cent,  on  German  ex 
ports,  and  discount  at  8^  per  cent.,  and  we  had  now  and 
then  mixed  up  tons  of  coal  with  marks,  and  discount  with 
compound  interest,  but,  on  the  whole,  not  much  more  seri 
ously  than  the  London  Conference  did.  And  so  we  got  back 
to  the  original  Peace  Treaty. 

"What,  as  a  matter  of  fact,"  said  Williams,  "do  you 
think  was  the  real  cause  of  the  mess  at  Versailles?  " 

"  I  am  the  only  one  in  town  who  isn't  quite  sure,"  I  said. 
"  But  sometimes  I  am  inclined  to  think  it  was  because  they 
had  too  many  young  men  at  the  Peace  Conference." 

"  The  other  way  about,  you  mean,"  said  Williams. 

"  What  my  meaning  may  ultimately  turn  out  to  be,  time 
alone  can  show,"  I  said,  somewhat  impatiently.  "  But  for 
the  present  I  do  mean  what  I  say.  They  had  too  many 
young  men  at  Paris  and  not  enough  old  men." 

"  Oh,"  said  Williams,  and  stared  out  of  the  window.  I 
was  uncertain  whether  he  was  doubtful  about  my  intelli 
gence  or  my  sincerity,  but  assumed  it  was  the  latter,  and  so 
refused  to  lose  my  temper. 

"  My  conclusions,"  I  said,  "  are  based  on  the  operations 
of  pure  reason.  WJoat  was  the  main  trouble  at  the  Peace 

22$ 


THE  DANGEROUS  AGE  227 

Conference?  Obviously,  this,  that  the  men  who  made  the 
Treaty  refused  to  look  facts  in  the  face.  They  drew  up  a 
system  of  European  frontiers  that  cannot  possibly  endure. 
They  created  little  nations  that  cannot  possibly  survive. 
They  imposed  upon  Germany  an  indemnity  that  she  cannot 
possibly  pay.  They  refused  to  profit  by  the  lessons  of  the 
past.  They  insisted  on  cutting  off  their  noses  to  spite  their 
faces.  They  were  passionate,  intolerant,  impatient  of 
mathematics,  self-contradictory,  violently  absurd." 

"  They  were  a  set  of  wicked  old  men,"  said  Williams. 

"  I  am  arguing  from  pure  reason,"  I  said.  "  And  pure 
reason  indicates  that  all  the  qualities  I  have  enumerated 
are  the  vices  of  youth.  Who  is  it  that  refuses  to  acknowl 
edge  facts  or  snaps  his  fingers  at  the  facts?  Who  is  it  that 
insists  on  abstract  rights  even  if  those  rights  have  been 
asleep  for  a  hundred  years?  Who  is  it  that  insists  on  un 
doing  ancient  wrongs  even  if  they  are  so  ancient  as  to  have 
become  established  rights?  Who  is  it  that  refuses  to  become 
reconciled  with  evil,  even  after  it  has  been  defeated?  The 
answer  is  Youth.  The  trouble  with  Clemenceau,  Lloyd 
George,  and  Woodrow  Wilson  was  apparently  that  they 
were  fifty  years  too  young — by  pure  reason." 

"  They  were  spiteful  old  men,"  said  Williams. 

"  Then  they  must  have  been  highly  exceptional  old  men," 
I  said.  "  Far  be  it  from  me  to  say  anything  in  justification 
of  the  old.  But  their  vices,  as  I  have  usually  studied  them 
in  the  columns  of  the  radical  press  and  in  the  indictments 
written  by  young  men  for  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  are  not  the 
ones  exhibited  at  Versailles.  Take,  for  instance,  the  old 
men  who  are  such  a  drag  on  progress  in  our  own  country,  a 


228  WILLIAMS 

drag  on  social  reconstruction,  on  the  freer  and  happier  life, 
on  the  freer  and  better  literature  and  art.  Why  are  they  a 
drag?  Not  because  they  are  spiteful  but  because  they  are 
timid;  because  they  insist  on  letting  well  enough  alone;  be 
cause  they  are  all  for  postponing  things,  and  patching  things 
up,  and  for  saying  '  Hush,  hush.'  If  you  get  an  old  man 
into  a  corner,  he  will  make  concessions.  He  will  not  die 
for  an  ideal.  In  other  words,  he  will  be  reasonable.  But 
none  of  these  things  happened  at  Versailles.  Therefore  it 
is  plain  that  the  Treaty  must  have  been  written  by  the 
young  men.  For  it  is  the  young  who  insist  on  having  their 
own  way." 

"  They  brought  on  tfie  war,"  said  Williams. 

"  The  young  men  did?  "  I  said. 

"  No,  the  old  men,"  said  Williams.  "  They  merely  sent 
out  the  young  men  to  do  the  fighting." 

"  Since  the  young  men,  as  a  rule,  are  the  sons  of  the  old 
men,"  I  said,  "  I  have  always  found  it  rather  hard  to  be 
lieve  that  the  old  men  went  deliberately  at  the  business  of 
murdering  the  young  men.  Once  upon  a  time  it  used  to  be 
said  that  it  was  the  young  men  in  the  armies  who  were  eager 
for  war.  To  put  it  rather  brutally,  a  good  sized  war,  with 
heavy  casualties,  meant  advancement  for  the  junior  officers. 
In  peace  times  the  world  moves  on,  as  a  rule,  by  the  law  of 
seniority.  War  is,  as  the  young  see  it,  a  big  boost  for  the 
merit  system.  Speaking  again  from  pure  reason,  who  do 
you  imagine  would  be  the  more  eager  for  a  scrap,  the  middle- 
aged  colonel  and  the  elderly  brigadier,  who  are  within  hail 
ing  distance  of  a  comfortable  retiring  pension,  or  the  young 
second  lieutenant,  who  cannot  afford  to  get  married  on  his 


THE  DANGEROUS  AGE 


23o  WILLIAMS 

loss  of  time  and  bash  in  the  face  of  the  hereditary  enemy.' 
So  this  is  what  you  have  to  decide  before  you  are  quite  sure 
that  the  old  men  are  responsible  for  the  mischief  at  Ver 
sailles.  You  must  decide  whether  old  men  are  a  danger  or 
only  a  bore." 

"  The  need  at  Versailles  was  for  a  new  vision,  a  generous 
response  to  the  demands  of  a  new  age,"  said  the  voice  of 
Williams's  favorite  editorial  writer,  speaking  through  the 
mouth  of  Williams. 

"  If  by  generous  you  mean  a  mind  and  heart  open  to 
new,  bold  ideas — "  I  said. 

"  I  do  mean  that,"  said  Williams. 

"  Then  youth  is  generous,"  I  said.  "  But  if  by  generous 
you  mean  that  youth  is  kindly,  tolerant,  and  understand 
ing—" 

"  I  mean  that,  too,"  said  Williams. 

"  Then  youth  is  nothing  of  the  kind,"  I  said.  "  For  the 
first  set  of  virtues  excludes  the  second  set.  To  the  extent 
that  youth  is  aflame  with  an  ideal,  it  will  not  endure  com 
promise  with  any  other  ideal.  Only  a  cynical  old  man  will 
do  that.  And  as  for  the  motive  behind  youth's  idealism  I 
suspect  you  will  often  find  it  to  be  self-interest.  After  all, 
there  is  no  particular  merit  in  youth's  wanting  to  go  for 
ward;  that's  where  the  youth  belongs.  Youth  wants  the 
new  for  the  same  reason  that  old  age  clings  to  the  old ;  there 
is  its  opportunity.  If  I  wanted  to  be  really  harsh  I  might 
say  that  youth  wants  the  new  because  the  old  has  already 
been  preempted  by  the  old  men.  Like  free  verse  or  the 
small-town  novel." 


THE  DANGEROUS  AGE  231 

"  When  it  comes  to  making  a  point  I  prefer  the  old  way 
of  saying  what  a  person  means,"  said  Williams. 

"  It  is  simple,"  I  said.  "  Young  people  are  now  writing 
unrimed  lines  because  they  think  that  is  the  better  and 
truer  poetry.  But  the  true  reason  is,  of  course,  that  the  old 
crowd  has  done  very  well  with  rimed  verse,  and  competition 
for  a  newcomer  is  much  easier  by  striking  out  in  a  new  field. 
And  because  the  old  people  have  done  very  well  with  the 
sugary  novel  the  young  folks  have  gone  in  for  mustard  and 
pepper.  Suppose  William  Dean  Howells  had  written  like 
Theodore  Dreiser.  Dreiser  would  now  be  writing  like 
Howells — if  he  knew  how.  So  when  you  hear  of  youth 
knocking  on  the  door,  don't  think  only  of  the  old  man  on  the 
inside.  Remember,  after  all,  that  the  other  fellow  is  bent 
upon  getting  in.  That's  why  he  knocks." 

"  He  ought  to  get  in,"  said  Williams. 

"  By  all  means,"  I  said.  "  That's  where  Edward  Bok  is 
so  profoundly  right.  And  that  is  where  the  Peace  Confer 
ence  made  a  mistake.  If  there  really  were  no  young  men 
there,  they  should  have  let  the  young  men  in." 

"  What  would  have  happened?  "  said  Williams. 

"  The  young  men  would  probably  have  taken  an  extra 
slice  out  of  Germany  and  an  extra  twenty  or  thirty  billion 
dollars,"  I  said. 


PATERNAL  AFFECTION— A  PERIL 

"TT  7 HAT  we  need,"  said  Williams,  "is  a  law  estab- 

V  V  lishing  a  speed  limit  on  a  man's  duty  to  his  fam 
ily.  Violation  of  the  law  should  be  a  penal  offense." 

"  We  need  it?  "  I  said. 

"  Would  I  be  suggesting  it  if  we  didn't?  "  he  said.  "  Look 
at  the  stuff  in  your  scandal  columns.  Ten  times  more  mis 
chief  is  done  by  men  who  feel  they  owe  it  to  their  families 
than  by  men  who  let  their  families  starve.  What  I  mean  is 
a  law  that  will  prohibit  unreasonable  speeding  in  the  matter 
of  providing  for  the  future  of  your  children.  It  might  be 
scientifically  graduated.  For  instance,  in  the  city  the  maxi 
mum  should  be,  say,  twenty  thousand  dollars  for  a  family 
of  three  children.  When  a  man  has  laid  aside  that  sum  to 
distribute  among  his  offspring  when  they  are  twenty-one, 
he  should  be  prohibited  from  engaging  in  any  occupation 
that  promises  to  carry  him  beyond  that  amount.  In  the 
country  the  maximum  might  be  put  at  $15,000,  or  perhaps  a 
bit  lower.  The  size  of  a  man's  family  will,  of  course,  have 
to  be  taken  into  account.  I  should  think  $6,500  for  every 
son  and  daughter  in  the  city  and  $5,000  in  the  country  and 
towns  of  less  than  fifty  thousand  population  would  be  about 
the  right  figure.  You'll  agree  to  that." 

"  I  will  agree,"  I  said,  "  provided  I  find  out  what  you 
driving  at." 

"  But  I've  told  you,"  said  Williams.    "  Look  at  your  scan- 

232 


PATERNAL  AFFECTION— A  PERIL 


234  WILLIAMS 

reau  chief  at  Washington.  He  has  done  excellent  work  for 
the  country,  he  has  influence,  popularity,  everything.  Then 
a  fashion  magazine  offers  him  a  million  dollars  a  year  to  be 
its  contributing  editor,  and  he  throws  up  his  job  because  he 
owes  it  to  his  family.  If  .this  is  so,  you  will  agree  with  me 
that  the  family  is  a  moral  danger  and  a  social  menace." 

"  People  will  persist  in  loving  their  young,"  I  said. 

"  They  should  be  made  not  to,"  said  Williams.  "  Mind 
you,  I  am  not  arguing  now  for  the  old-fashioned  notion  that 
the  best  legacy  a  man  can  leave  to  his  children  is  poverty 
and  an  honest  name.  Honesty  and  poverty  by  themselves 
are  rather  a  drug  on  the  market.  Though  even  there  one 
might  put  up  an  argument.  I  should  imagine  that  being  the 
college-bred  eldest  son  of  a  Chief  Justice  who  died  leaving 
an  estate  of  $2,477  with  no  debts  is  a  fairly  good  start  in 
life.  But  if  that  young  man's  father,  in  addition  to  good 
health,  a  good  name,  and  a  college  education,  leaves  him, 
say,  $6,500,  what  more  would  he  want?  He  can  go  into 
business  with  that  or  he  can  spend  three  years  abroad  and 
make  himself  a  pretty  good  chemist  or  pathologist  or  eth 
nologist  or  whatever  he  would  like  to  be.  A  fortune  of 
$6,500  in  the  city  and  $5,000  in  the  country,  a  sound  body, 
a  decently  trained  mind — that's  as  much  as  the  President 
of  the  United  States  owes  as  a  duty  to  any  one  of  his  chil 
dren." 

"  The  simple  life,"  I  said. 

"  The  honest  and  effective  life,"  he  said.  "  When  those 
men  speak  of  their  duty  to  their  families,  what  is  it  they 
think  of?  Automobiles  for  the  young  man  at  college,  Eu 
rope  every  other  year,  Palm  Beach  alternate  years,  and  in 


PATERNAL  AFFECTION— A  PERIL    235 

the  end — I  mean  the  father's  end — the  assurance  for  his  chil 
dren  of  a  steady  income,  obviating  all  necessity  of  work. 
The  odd  thing  is  that  it  is  your  multimillionaires  who  have 
the  soundest  ideas  regarding  what  they  owe  to  their  chil 
dren.  If  your  father  is  a  railroad  king,  he  puts  you  to  work 
in  one  of  his  freight  stations  as  soon  as  you  graduate;  and 
if  he  is  a  money  king,  he  puts  you  behind  a  desk  in  front 
of  a  ledger  and  a  cash  book." 

"  That,"  I  said,  "  proves  what  I  meant  by  the  simple  life. 
Only  the  very  rich  can  afford  it.  The  man  of  moderate 
means  knows  what  it  costs  to  be  simple  and  useful  and  he 
tries  to  save  his  children  from  the  fate." 

"  I  wonder,"  said  Williams,  "  whether  they  really  mean 
what  they  say  when  they  speak  of  one's  duty  to  one's  fam 
ily." 

"  What  becomes  of  your  argument  if  they  don't?  " 

"  There  is  a  story  by  Edith  Wharton,"  he  said.  "  It's 
called  l  The  Pelican/  I  think.  I  haven't  read  it  myself,  but 
I  remember  a  book  reviewer's  account  of  it.  That  isn't 
much,  but  it's  something.  It's  about  a  woman  who  is  left  a 
widow  with  one  child,  a  boy,  and  no  money  to  speak  of.  To 
support  the  boy  she  goes  on  the  lecture  platform.  She 
makes  a  success  of  it ;  in  part  her  success  is  due  to  the  fact, 
which  she  is  rather  careful  to  publish,  that  she  is  doing  it 
all  for  her  son.  The  boy  grows  up  and  goes  into  business 
and  makes  his  way  and  is  perfectly  competent  to  take  care 
of  his  mother,  not  to  speak  of  himself.  But  his  mother 
keeps  on  lecturing.  The  fact  is,  she  likes  the  work,  the  ex 
citement,  the  publicity,  and  the  tradition  of  self-sacrificing 
mother-love.  The  son  resents  being  made  an  object  of  un- 


236  WILLIAMS 

necessary  charity  even  if  it  is  his  own  mother.  I  don't  re 
call  how  it  all  ends,  but  you  see  the  point." 

I  said  I  did,  but  he  insisted  on  driving  it  in. 

"  I  sometimes  suspect  that  these  men  who  go  in  for  money 
because  they  owe  it  as  a  duty  to  their  children  really  like 
the  business  of  money-making  in  itself,  the  fun  of  it  and  the 
things  that  come  with  money.  It's  rather  unfair  to  put  it  all 
up  to  one's  children." 

"  How  about  your  speed  law  then?  "  I  said. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  we  might  indict  them  for  false  repre 
sentation." 


SURGICAL 

WILLIAMS  said  he  wondered  whether  people  weren't 
going  too  far  in  all  this  talk  about  revitalized  con 
stitutions  and  that  sort  of  thing.  He  said  he  could  go  back 
a  dozen  years  and  recall  at  least  a  dozen  infallible  schemes 
for  reinvigorating  the  American  constitution,  and  he  didn't 
see  that  we  were  any  better  off. 

"  You  refer/'  I  said,  "  to  the  encroachment  of  the  Execu 
tive  upon  the  Legislative  department?  " 

;;  Xo,"  said  Williams,  "  I  was  thinking  of  the  interstitial 
gland." 

Williams  said  there  was  a  time  not  so  many  years  ago 
when  the  diseases  of  old  age  could  be  warded  off  and  life 
could  be  indefinitely  prolonged  by  walking  barefoot  in  the 
grass.  The  method  was  quite  simple.  You  got  up  soon  after 
sunrise  and  walked  for  half  an  hour  in  the  dew-laden  grass. 
Then  you  took  Indian  club  exercises  in  your  bedroom  and 
breakfasted  lightly  on  toast  and  coffee  without  sugar.  You 
gave  up  smoking  two  hours  before  and  after  every  meal  and 
in  public  conveyances.  You  cut  out  all  pastries  and  red 
meats  for  lunch,  to  which  meal  you  devoted  at  least  an  hour, 
chewing  your  food  carefully,  and  finishing  off  with  a  half- 
mile  walk.  The  same  process  was  followed  for  dinner,  ex 
cept  that  you  walked  two  miles  and  a  half.  In  the  course 
of  the  day  it  was  desirable  to  drink  at  least  a  dozen  glasses 
of  water.  Bedtime  was  at  9.  People  who  tried  it  must 

237 


238  WILLIAMS 

have  derived  much  good  from  the  barefoot  treatment,  but, 
somehow  or  other,  it  has  passed  out  of  fashion. 

"  You  don't  suppose,"  I  said,  "  it  was  because  people  felt 
that  even  if  life  were  indefinitely  prolonged  it  would  be  too 
short  for  this  sort  of  program?  " 

"  It  may  be,"  said  Williams.  "  Subsequently  people  set 
out  to  combat  old  age  with  buttermilk.  The  idea  was  not 
a  bad  one.  You  got  up  shortly  after  sunrise,  took  light  ex 
ercise,  had  your  cold  tub,  and  breakfasted  moderately  on 
toast  and  two  glasses  of  buttermilk.  The  use  of  tobacco 
was  prohibited  for  an  hour  and  a  half  after  breakfast  and 
the  same  period  before  lunch,  which  consisted  of  buttermilk, 
toast,  and  a  bit  of  white  meat  if  you  felt  you  must  have 
meat.  After  lunch  you  walked  half  a  mile.  The  same  proc 
ess  held  good  for  dinner,  except  that  you  were  supposed  to 
walk  two  and  a  half  miles.  The  best  results  were  obtained 
if  the  patient  drank  a  dozen  glasses  of  water  in  the  course 
of  the  day,  a  glass  of  hot  water  immediately  after  rising 
and  another  before  retiring.  Bedtime  was  at  9.  I  have 
known  this  treatment  to  do  much  good.  People  who  had 
been  made  twenty  years  younger  by  walking  barefoot  in 
the  grass  told  me  they  had  never  felt  so  young  as  after  they 
had  tried  buttermilk.  And  yet  buttermilk  has  gone  out." 

"  You  don't  imagine  people  were  frightened  by  the 
thought  of  being  yanked  back  into  helpless  infancy  if  they 
kept  it  up?  "  I  said. 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Williams.  "  Well,  after  that  we  had  the 
violet  ray,  and  after  that  bran  and  mineral  oil.  I  suppose 
you  know  all  about  them?  " 

"  Not  in  detail,"  I  said,  "  but  I  assume  it  means  getting 


SURGICAL  239 

up  at  5:30,  massaging  your  scalp  with  the  violet  ray,  In 
dian  clubs,  mixing  bran  with  your  oatmeal,  cutting  down  to 
three  cigarettes  a  day,  walking  four  and  a  half  miles,  omit 
ting  pastry  and  sugar,  and  going  to  bed  at  9." 

"  That's  pretty  near  the  idea,"  said  Williams,  "  except 
that  you  have  omitted  the  hot  water  morning  and  evening 
and  a  dozen  glasses  of  spring  water  in  the  course  of  the  day. 
And  now  it  is  the  interstitial  gland." 

"  I  fail  to  see  the  parallel,"  I  said.  "  The  cures  you  have 
mentioned  were  all  essentially  hygienic.  This  other  thing 
is  a  radical  experiment  in  surgery.  They  take  the  inter 
stitial  gland  from  the  body  of  an  ape  and  transplant  it  into 
the  human  patient — " 

"  I  know  all  that,"  said  Williams,  "  but  here  is  the  suspi 
cion  I  can't  get  rid  of.  After  they  have  inserted  the  inter 
stitial  gland  into  your  system,  will  they  make  you  get  up  at 
sunrise  and  cut  out  tobacco  and  French  pastry  and  drink 
a  bucket  of  cold  water?  Personally  I  don't  believe  in 
miracles.  I  don't  believe  you  can  cure  constitutional  break 
down  by  taking  out  something  here  and  inserting  it  there  so 
that  the  next  time  a  treaty  of  peace  comes  up  you  find  every 
organ  coordinating  perfectly  with  every  other  organ.  That's 
a  problem  of  a  different  nature." 

"  You  refer  to  the  increase  of  degenerative  diseases  among 
men  over  fifty?  "  I  said. 

"  No,"  said  Williams,  "  I  mean  the  encroachment  of  the 
Executive  upon  the  powers  of  the  Senate." 

"  That's  flippancy,"  I  said.  "  If  you  had  made  even  a 
superficial  study  of  Dr.  Voronoff's  experiments  with  the  in 
terstitial  gland  you  would  think  differently.  The  method  of 


240  WILLIAMS 

transplantation,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  not  new.  For  some 
time  before  Dr.  Voronoff  announced  his  discovery — " 

"  What  is  the  interstitial  gland?  "  said  Williams. 

"  For  some  time  before  Dr.  Voronoff  announced  his  dis 
covery,"  I  continued,  "  extraordinary  results  had  already 
been  attained  with  the  thyroid  gland.  By  means  of  injec 
tions  into  the  thyroid  gland  it  has  been  found  possible  to 
add  several  inches  to  the  stature  of  undersized  children.  In 
the  same  way — " 

"  Just  where  is  the  thyroid  gland  located?  "  said  Wil 
liams. 

"  In  the  same  way,"  I  continued,  "  it  has  been  found  pos 
sible  to  stimulate  the  growth  of  intelligence  in  children  by 
manipulation  of  the  pituitary  gland,  either  through  the  re 
moval  of  pressure  on  the  gland  or  the  application  of  pressure 
— I  don't  at  the  moment  recall  which." 

"  The  pituitary  gland  is  somewhere  in  the  throat,  isn't 
it?  "  said  Williams. 

"  And  as  to  revitalizing  the  constitutional  powers  of  the 
Senate,"  I  said,  "  I  don't  believe  that  a  surgical  operation 
would  work  miracles,  though  I  admit  the  case  calls  for  heroic 
treatment.  But  on  the  other  hand,  light  exercise  and  rest — " 

"  And  here's  what  I  am  thinking  about,"  said  Williams. 
"  How  about  the  sophomores  at  Yale?  " 

"  Sophomores?    Yale?  "  I  said. 

"  You  will  recall,"  he  said,  "  that  whenever  anything  new 
comes  up,  like  walking  in  the  grass  or  the  interstitial  gland 
or  the  carbonic  contents  of  lime  juice,  they  try  it  out  on  the 
sophomores.  They  lock  them  up  in  an  ice  box  or  put  them 
into  a  bath  tub  and  feed  them  on  lime  juice  or  recite  to  them 


SURGICAL  241 

the  Gettysburg  Address  and  see  whether  the  water  spills 
over.  The  only  thing  they  haven't  tried  on  sophomores  is 
filling  them  up  with  Latin  and  mathematics  and  seeing  what 
happens.  Or  do  you  think  that  the  interstitial  gland  has  no 
effect  on  the  intelligence?  " 

"  Sophomores,  you  mean?  "  I  said. 

"  I  was  thinking  of  the  Senate,"  said  Williams. 


I 


STANDING  ROOM  ONLY 

N  the  several  hundred  books  on  the  Drama  more  or  less, 
which  have  been  published  since  the  first  of  January, 
you  will  look  in  vain  for  any  allusion  to  the  one  great  dis 
covery  about  the  theater  made  in  recent  years.  Mr.  Gran- 
ville  Barker  was  the  discoverer.  Even  Mr.  Barker  gives 
you  only  half  the  truth,  but  that  means  at  least  48  per  cent, 
more  truth  than  you  find  in  the  average  book  on  the  drama. 
It  happened  at  a  dinner  of  university  presidents,  editors, 
and  financiers,  and  this  is  what  Mr.  Barker  said: 

"  When  I  think  of  the  millions  of  people  who  get  from 
the  theater,  night  after  night,  all  their  mental  and  moral 
stimulus,  and  to  whom  it  is  the  greatest  teacher  at  the  most 
susceptible  time  of  their  lives — between  the  ages  of  seven 
teen  and  twenty-five — " 

How  many  of  your  analysts  of  the  stage  who  have  writ 
ten  on  the  Theater  and  Religion,  the  Theater  and  Democ 
racy,  the  Theater  and  the  New  Spirit,  the  Theater  and  the 
New  Sociology,  the  Theater  and  the  What-not,  have  ever 
stopped  to  take  account  of  this  simple,  basic  fact,  the  Thea 
ter  and  the  Average  Age  of  Theater  Audiences?  Mr.  Barker 
has  here  gone  to  the  heart  of  the  problem.  He  has  not 
bothered  to  portion  off  his  public  into  the  recognized  classes, 
the  Tired  Business  Man,  the  Buyer  from  Peoria,  111.,  the 
Highbrow,  the  Lowbrow,  the  Reformer  and  the  man  who 
falls  asleep  immediately  after  the  rise  of  the  curtain.  He 

242 


STANDING  ROOM  ONLY  243 

has  found  the  formula  which  cuts  horizontally  across  the 
entire  public.  To  the  young  and  the  comparatively  untaught 
the  theater  must  make  its  appeal.  The  box  office  would  cor 
roborate  him.  Older  people  go  to  the  theater,  but  they  are 
in  a  minority.  If  men  under  twenty-five  stopped  taking 
women  under  twenty-five  to  the  show,  you  might  as  well  shut 
up  shop. 

But  what  does  it  mean  when  you  say  that  theater  audi 
ences  are  made  up  in  the  main  of  people  between  the  ages 
of  seventeen  and  twenty-five?  It  means  that  the  theater 
must  make  its  principal  appeal  to  men  and  women  in  the 
mating  season.  It  means  that  your  audiences  do  not  know, 
and  are  not  concerned  with,  the  realities  of  life,  but  are 
very  much  concerned  with  romance,  with  illusion,  and  most 
intimately  with  themselves,  as  the  happy  inhabitants  of  the 
very  best  of  all  possible  worlds.  You  have  to  deal  not  with 
an  intellectual  audience,  but  with  an  emotional  audience, 
and  one  that  recognizes  only  the  sweeter  emotions.  Intel 
lectually  they  are  apt  to  be  satisfied  with  "  Nellie  the  Beau 
tiful  Cloak  Model."  That  is,  if  your  young  man  of  twenty- 
five  is  from  Harvard  and  your  young  woman  of  over  seven 
teen  from  Vassar,  you  may  have  to  make  Nellie  a  little  less 
golden-haired,  but  Nellie  will  do. 

Consider  the  Victrola.  Consider  the  ready-made  suit 
jthat  is  different.  Consider  the  collapsible  canoe,  the 
patent  house  paint,  the  vacuum  cleaner,  the  motor  car,  the 
chemically  pure  soap,  the  sanitary  tooth  powder,  and  the 
fireless  cooker.  Observe  how  the  men  who  have  these  com 
modities  to  sell  and  advertise  them,  in  the  magazines  have 
recognized  that  the  strongest  appeal  is  made  to  men  and 


244  WILLIAMS 

women  in  what  I  have  called  the  mating  season.  Nearly 
everything  that  is  advertised  in  the  magazines  is  made 
touch  on  that  most  susceptible  age,  the  magic  age  of  romance 
illusion,  and  quite  ridiculous  optimism.  In  the  magazii 
pages,  only  the  young  dance  to  the  strains  of  the  Victrola. 
The  ready-made  suit  from  Chicago  is  only  for  young  man 
hood,  with  a  girl  exultant  over  the  cut  of  the  collar.  The 
collapsible  canoe  has  a  girl  in  it.  The  vacuum  cleaner  is 
manipulated  by  youth  and  beauty.  The  patent  house  paint 
is  applied  by  athletic  youth  on  a  ladder  under  the  ecstatic 
gaze  of  a  very  young  bride.  People  in  middle  age  presum 
ably  use  chemically  pure  soaps  and  sanitary  tooth-pastes, 
but  not  in  the  magazine  pages.  Always  the  appeal  is  to 
youth  and  romance.  Advertisers  presumably  know  that 
when  a  man  and  a  woman  are  in  love  you  can  sell  them  any 
thing. 

How  much  more  true,  then,  is  it  that  youth  must  be  the 
ultimate  consumer  in  that  specialized  market  of  the  emotions 
— the  theater?  When  the  critic  with  the  horn-rimmed  spec 
tacles  sneers  at  the  play  that  is  written  for  the  young  man 
and  his  best  girl,  it  simply  shows  that  something  more  than 
horn-rimmed  spectacles  are  needed  for  understanding  the 
mission  of  the  drama.  Take  away  the  emotions  and  the  out 
look  of  the  young  man  and  his  best  girl  and  you  have  cut  the 
underpinnings  from  nearly  all  of  your  plays,  poems,  pic 
tures,  and  music.  So  that  Mr.  Granville  Barker,  in  empha 
sizing  the  function  of  the  young  in  the  theater,  has  done  a 
real  service. 

Further  than  this  we  cannot  go  with  Mr.  Barker.  If  he 
thinks  that  he  can  build  his  cherished  theater  of  Ideas,  of 


STANDING  ROOM  ONLY  245 

Truth,  of  Life,  on  this  foundation  of  emotional  youth,  he  is 
sadly  mistaken.  If  he  thinks  he  is  going  to  make  his  thea 
ter  a  school  for  moral  and  mental  stimulus  for  men  and 
women  in  their  most  susceptible  age — from  seventeen  to 
twenty-five — he  is  wrong.  You  can  teach  them  before  they 
are  seventeen;  they  are  not  troubled  with  emotions  then 
and  are  still  inclined  to  recognize  authority.  You  can  teach 
them  after  they  are  twenty-five,  because  life  has  begun  to 
teach  them  at  this  point  and  you  can  help  a  bit.  But  you 
cannot  teach  them  between  seventeen  and  twenty-five,  be 
cause  they  are  too  busy  to  learn.  They  are  too  happy  to  be 
taught  by  tragedy  and  they  are  too  ignorant  for  comedy. 
The  very  suggestion  of  a  theater  of  ideas  for  the  young  is 
absurd.  They  don't  want  ideas  as  long  as  they  have  all  the 
emotions  they  can  harbor. 

We  may  put  it  bluntly,  then.  If  the  great  mass  of  your 
theater-goers  is  twenty-five  years  of  age  and  less,  you  may 
as  well  give  up  your  hopes  for  a  popular  theater  of  Ibsen, 
Shaw,  Synge,  the  soberer  Pinero,  Shakespeare,  and  cer 
tainly  Brieux.  You  cannot  have  a  theater  of  ideas  for  the 
young  if  you  will  once  more  stop  to  think  of  the  Victrola. 

For  it  must  be  plain  that  in 'this  magic  time  between 
seventeen  and  twenty-five,  this  time  of  illusion,  romance, 
faith,  and  comparative  intellectual  quiescence,  all  Victrolas 
emit  enchantment,  all  ready-made  suits  enshrine  Apollo,  all 
patent  house  paints  wear  for  years  at  an  absurdly  low  initial 
expenditure.  Try  to  imagine  a  mordant  satire  of  the  Vic 
trola,  try  to  imagine  a  remorseless  expose  of  the  cost  of  paint 
ing  your  own  roof,  try  to  imagine  an  ironic  depictment  of  a 
correspondence  course  in  agriculture.  With  men  and  women 


246  WILLIAMS 

in  their  time  of  romance  the  thing  can't  be  done.  They  don't 
want  the  truth  as  long  as  they  have  themselves  and  illusion. 
Your  theater  of  ideas,  if  it  is  built,  will  be  built  for  those 
of  us  who  are  more  than  twenty-five.  That  is  why  it  can 
not  be  a  very  big  theater. 


FARMERS 

WILLIAMS  said  that  he  viewed  with  disquiet  the 
drift  from  the  farm  to  the  cities.    He  said  the  per- 
i  centage  of  increase  in  our  urban  population  since  1910  was 
I  unprecedented,  especially  if  you  were  not  careful  about  your 
j  decimal  points.    The  other  day  on  the  train  young  Loftus 
|  figured  out  that  if  things  continued  as  they  are  now  the  popu 
lation  of  the  cities  in  1930  would  be  three  times  the  popula 
tion  of  the  cities  and  the  country  combined.     And  when 
Jennings  pointed  out  that  Loftus  should  have  divided  in 
stead  of  multiplying  Loftus  said  what  difference  would  that 
make  as  long  as  our  farmers  kept  taking  everything  out  of 
the  soil  without  putting  anything  back. 

"  You  refer,"  I  said,  "  to  the  time  when  there  will  not  be 
enough  food  raised  on  our  farms  to  feed  the  cities?  " 

"No,"  said  Williams;  "I  was  thinking  of  'Slick  Gents' 
up  at  the  Wintergreen." 

Williams  said  he  wasn't  quite  as  stirred  up  over  "  Slick 
Gents  "  as  Mrs.  Williams  was,  but  he  liked  it  as  well  as  any 
show  he  had  seen  for  a  long  time.  That  was  really  an  ex 
ceedingly  moving  scene  where  young  Watkins,  after  a  pretty 
swift  career  in  Wall  Street  and  around  Broadway,  comes 
back  to  the  old  farm  in  search  of  his  lost  health  and  his 
father's  forgiveness.  You'd  .have  to  go  far  to  find  a  speci 
men  of  kindly  wisdom  like  old  Si  Watkins.  What  is  it  in 
the  country  air  that  is  so  conducive  to  homely  shrewdness 

247 


248  WILLIAMS 

and  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  human  heart?  Williams 
said  that  if  Elihu  Root  had  taken  the  train  for  somewhere 
up-State  old  Jake  Simmons  would  have  had  that  Interna 
tional  Court  tangle  solved  a  year  ago. 

"  This  is  quite  true,"  I  said.  "  I  am  fond  of  the  theater 
myself,  and  I  have  been  repeatedly  delighted  to  hear  old 
Hiram  Dunker,  who  has  worked  his  farm  for  fifty  years  and 
saved  up  $411.35,  pointing  out  the  secret  of  success  in  life 
to  his  oldest  son,  who  is  president  of  the  Paraffine  Trust 
Company,  in  Chicago,  with  a  capital  stock  of  $10,000,000. 
It  is  refreshing  to  see  Phyllis  Boudoir,  who  has  been  doing 
Greek  dancing  in  New  York  since  1911,  learning  the  secret 
of  how  to  win  a  man's  love  permanently  from  her  mother, 
who  married  in  1876  and  has  since  visited  Albany  twice.  If 
the  drift  to  the  city  continues  I  can  very  well  see  how  the 
American  drama  will  come  to  an  untimely  end  with  the  ex 
haustion  of  our  raw  stocks  of  homely  rural  wisdom." 

"  Don't  you  think,"  said  Williams,  "  that  the  introduc 
tion  of  business  methods  would  be  of  help?  " 

"  You  mean  in  winning  a  true  man's  love?  "  I  said. 

"  No,"  said  Williams,  "  I  was  thinking  of  our  threatened 
food  supply." 

"  That,"  I  said,  "  is  a  debatable  question.  It  seems  to  be 
quite  true  that  the  homely  wisdom  of  our  farmers,  which  is  ; 
always  equal  to  dealing  with  life  in  the  lobster  palaces  and 
on  the  Stock  Exchange,  breaks  down  badly  when  it  comes 
to  running  a  farm.  Perhaps  the  reason  is  that  farmers  are 
so  occupied  in  looking  after  their  prodigal  children  from  the 
city  that  they  have  little  time  left  for  looking  after  the 
crops.  Just  the  same,  there  is,  at  first  sight,  a  good  deal 


FARMERS  249 

in  the  suggestion  that  what  the  farmer  needs  is  business 
methods.  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  by  installing  a 
double-entry  system  and  a  dictograph  the  per  capita  output 
of  milk  per  cow  may  be  notably  increased  if  there  is  no 
drought.  It  is  quite  likely  that  by  installing  electric  wash 
ing  machines  such  as  the  United  States  Treasury  employs 
to  launder  old  banknotes  the  farmer's  wife  may  afford  to 
get  up  as  late  as  5:30  mornings.  It  is  quite  probable  that 
if  the  farmer  adopted  the  auditing  methods  employed  so 
successfully  by  the  Northeastern  Life  Insurance  Company  in 
its  456  branches  the  farmer  might  better  know  where  he  is 
at,  provided  it  rains." 

"  You  don't  think  it  is  because  at  heart  we  all  of  us  long 
for  the  simple  things  of  life?  "  said  Williams. 

"  That  our  food  supply  is  threatening  to  fail?  "  I  said. 

"  No,"  said  Williams.  "  I  mean  why  all  of  us  like  to  see 
those  dear  old  country  sages  on  the  stage." 

Some  day,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  Williams  will  learn  to  listen. 
But  that  time  is  not  yet  in  sight. 

"  I  don't  imagine  it  is  so  much  a  longing  for  the  simple 
life  as  for  the  different  life,"  I  said.  "  When  it  comes  to 
simplicity,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  in  the  city  have  been  re 
ducing  life  to  its  simplest  terms.  People  usually  worry 
about  food;  but  soon  there  will  be  no  food,  as  you  pointed 
out,  and  there  will  be  no  use  in  worrying.  People  usually 
worry  about  a  roof  over  their  heads,  but  there  is  no  use  wor 
rying,  for  the  city  is  40,000  apartments  short,  and  it  won't 
do  you  any  good.  People  worry  about  dress,  but  if  fashions 
continue  to  get  shorter  and  tighter  there  will  soon  be  no 
clothes  to  worry  about.  What  else  is  there?  Children,  to 


250  WILLIAMS 

be  sure.  Well,  that  source  of  worry  is  rapidly  disappearing 
in  the  city.  So  you  can  see  how  fast  the  simple  life  is  com 
ing  to  town." 

"  And  you  don't  think  business  methods  will  help?  "  said 
Williams. 

"  In  the  city?  "  I  said. 

"  On  the  farm,"  said  Williams. 

"  I  am  inclined  to  think  no,"  I  said. 

"  But  just  a  little  while  ago  you  were  inclined  to  think 
yes,"  he  said. 

"  Ah,"  I  said,  "  a  little  while  ago.  Since  then  conditions 
have  changed  and  I  don't  quite  know  what  to  think.  Sub 
ject  to  change  without  notice,  I  will  venture  to  say  that 
on  the  whole  business  methods  would  rather  hurt  than  help. 
Compel  the  farmer  to  take  to  bookkeeping  and  scientific 
management  and  you  run  a  chance  of  failing  to  get  the 
small  amount  of  food  we  may  still  expect  under  the  present 
system.  Yes,  at  this  moment  I  feel  confident  that  the 
worst  thing  you  can  do  is  to  turn  the  farmer  into  a  business 
man." 

"  You  mean  he  will  only  make  a  botch  of  business  meth 
ods?  "  said  Williams. 

"  Quite  the  contrary,"  I  said.  "  The  more  he  makes  a 
go  of  business  principles  the  better  your  chances  of  starving 
in  the  city.  Teach  the  farmer  auditing  and  cost  accounts 
and  what  will  happen?  He  will  be  definitely  confirmed  in 
what  he  has  always  strongly  suspected;  namely,  that  farm 
ing  doesn't  pay.  And  what  will  he  do  then?  He  will  break 
from  his  farm  with  a  yell  like  the  monk  of  Siberia  and  beat 
it^  as  young  Loftus  would  say,  for  town." 


FARMERS  251 

"  I  grew  up  on  a  farm,"  said  Williams  with  entire  sym 
pathy. 

"  Agriculture  is  only  possible,"  I  said,  "  by  a  rigid  adher 
ence  to  non-business  principles.  If  the  price  of  wheat  fell 
and  the  farmer  were  a  business  man,  what  would  he  do?  He 
would  behave  like  a  woolen  company  and  stop  work.  He 
would  let  his  fields  lie  idle.  Not  being  a  business  man, 
what  does  he  do?  He  growls  a  bit  louder  and  plows  a  bit 
deeper  and  works  his  wife  a  good  deal  harder,  and  so  some 
how  you  get  your  food.  Now  and  then  you  hear  about 
farmers  threatening  to  go  on  strike  and  cutting  down  their 
acreage.  And  what  is  the  next  thing  you  hear?  The  big 
gest  corn  crop  on  record,  or  more  hay  than  you  could  choke 
all  the  cows  on  earth  with.  You  see,  somehow  the  soil  is  not 
a  factory  or  a  salesroom;  it  cries  to  be  at  work,  profit  or  no 
profit.  And  the  farmer  is  impelled  by  all  the  forces  of  his 
unbusinesslike  nature  to  dig  and  sow  and  reap.  He  is  like 
an  ant  that  must  go  on  laying  eggs  whether  the  world  needs 
them  or  not." 

"  Does  an  ant  lay  eggs?  "  said  Williams. 

"  I  have  never  studied  the  psychology  of  salesmanship,  so 
I  don't  know,"  I  said. 

Williams  regarded  me  with  a  touch  of  what  almost  looked 
like  admiration. 

"  I  think  you  would  make  a  bully  farmer/'  he  said. 

"  I  don't  believe  I  have  ever  handled  a  hoe  in  my  life,"  I 
said,  blushing. 

"  On  the  stage,  I  mean,"  said  Williams. 


COMPLEXES  IN  ORION 

(Written  before  the  death  of  Bert  Leston  Taylor  at 
Chicago,  March  19,  1921) 

WILLIAMS  said  he  wondered  if  they  had  psycho 
analysis  on  Betelgeuse.  Noticing  the  look  of  pain 
on  my  face,  he  hastened  to  explain.  He  was  not  hoping 
that  they  had  complexes  up  there  in  Orion;  he  was  only 
wondering.  On  the  whole,  he  was  inclined  to  believe  they 
didn't. 

"  Do  you  read  B.  L.  T.?  "  I  said. 

'<  Is  it  a  star?  "  he  said. 

"  It  is,"  I  said.  "  In  the  Chicago  Tribune,  and  of  the 
first  magnitude.  I  don't  know  whether  Prof.  Michelson  has 
measured  the  diameter  of  B.  L.  T.,  but  this  much  I  know 
about  its  distance:  A  ray  of  light  emitted  by  B.  L.  T.  in 
the  Chicago  Tribune  frequently  takes  several  days  before  it 
reaches  the  paragraphers  and  columnists  in  other  systems. 
But  that  is  not  the  point." 

"  I  didn't  imagine  it  was,"  said  Williams  mildly.  "  You 
would  be  getting  to  it  remarkably  soon." 

"  Last  summer,"  I  said,  "  I  was  delegated  to  attend  the 
Republican  convention  at  Chicago.  I  represented  a  news 
paper  which  had  thrown  its  powerful  support  to  an  ideal 
candidate  who  received  five  and  a  half  votes  in  the  conven 
tion  out  of  a  possible  984.  I  am  perhaps  doing  him  an  in- 

25* 


COMPLEXES  IN  ORION  253 

justice.  It  may  have  been  six  and  a  half  votes.  But  I  am 
approximately  correct.  That,  however,  is  not  the  point." 

"  But  we  are  getting  there,"  said  Williams  cheerfully. 

"  As  usual,"  I  said,  "  I  did  not  sleep  well  on  the  train. 
After  that  trip,  in  fact,  I  could  honestly  qualify  as  one  of  the 
most  eminent  authorities  in  the  country  on  night-life  in  the 
Buffalo  train-yards,  around  the  Cleveland  round-houses,  and 
near  the  Toledo  coal-sheds,  if  these  indeed  are  the  places 
we  passed  through.  That,  however,  is  not  the  point.  The 
point  is  that  after  a  night  spent  between  looking  out  in  the 
dark  and  weighing  the  chances  of  Lowden,  Leonard  Wood, 
and  Herbert  Hoover,  dawn  came,  and,  with  it,  or  soon  after, 
a  newsboy  who  peddled  Chicago  Tribunes.  And  there,  at 
the  head  of  the  column,  B.  L.  T.  bade  me  welcome  to  his 
fair  city  by  reprinting  his  little  poem  on  Canopus." 

"  A  star,  I  gather,"  said  Williams. 

"  Very  nearly  the  finest  poem  in  the  English  language,"  I 
said.  "  I  remember  only  the  last  two  lines.  But  this  is  the 
context:  When  the  politicians  and  reformers  and  reaction 
aries  and  eugenists  and  psychoanalysts  and  other  profes 
sionals  begin  to  beat  their  tom-toms,  and  point  with  pride 
and  view  with  alarm,  why,  then  it  is  good  to  turn  one's 
thoughts ^to  Canopus: 

"  *  star  that  has  no  parallax  to  speak  of 
Conduces  to  repose.' 

And  now  you  want  to  take  poor  Betelgeuse,  which  is  fur 
ther  off  than  Canopus,  and  load  it  up  with  repressions  and 
things." 
"  That,  I  presume,  is  the  point  at  last,"  said  Williams. 


254  WILLIAMS 

"  Williams,"  I  said,  somewhat  testily,  "  a  ray  of  light 
emanating  from  a  human  intelligence  is  sure  to  reach  you 
in  the  course  of  a  couple  of  hundred  years." 

"  I  was  only  wondering,"  said  Williams.  "  If  there  is  life 
on  Betelgeuse,  it  occurred  to  me  that  a  world  27,000,000 
times  the  size  of  the  sun  would  be  just  about  the  place 
where  a  few  people  might  manage  to  live  without  suppress 
ing  their  own  desires  or  treading  on  other  people's  toes." 

"  But  that  is  quite  an  idea,"  I  said  with  unaffected  ad 
miration. 

Williams  was  pleased.  He  said  the  thing  did  not  come 
to  him  all  at  once,  but  as  the  result  of  much  reading  in 
nervous  literature  and  much  reflection.  I  nodded.  Williams 
gets  his  philosophy  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow.  He  is  not  one 
of  those  keen,  dynamic  minds  with  whom  thought  and  deci 
sion  are  simultaneous.  You  lay  all  the  facts  before  them 
and  in  a  flash  they  give  you  the  wrong  answer.  No,  Wil 
liams  was  not  like  that. 

"  The  thing  that  puzzles  me  is  this,"  he  said.  "  On  the 
one  hand,  all  the  mischief  in  the  world  comes  from  clamping 
the  lid  on  your  desires.  Very  well.  But  when  a  man  doesn't 
hammer  down  the  lid  and  reaches  out  after  what  he  wants, 
there  is  the  devil  to  pay.  What  is  the  answer?  " 

"  Betelgeuse,"  I  said. 

"  Just  what  I  had  in  mind,"  he  said.  "  Take  the  Peace 
Conference,  for  instance." 

"  On  Betelgeuse,"  I  said. 

"  In  Paris,"  he  said.  "  I  heard  a  nice  lecture  the  other 
day.  One-half  of  it  was  about  neurotic  discharges  and  the 
pther  half  was  about  Upper  Silesia,  and  reparations,  and 


COMPLEXES  IN  ORION  255 

secret  diplomacy.  That's  the  way  most  lectures  go  now 
adays.  Well,  all  at  once  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  Peace 
Conference  was  100  per  cent,  justified  by  all  the  laws  of 
Freud." 

"  No  inhibitions  and  complexes,  you  mean?  "  I  said. 

"  Not  a  smell  of  one,"  said  Williams.  "  The  only  thing 
that  was  repressed  at  Versailles  was  the  reporters.  Every 
body  else  was  spontaneous.  Now,  just  imagine  what  would 
have  happened  if  the  peace  makers  had  behaved  the  other 
way  about.  Suppose  Clemenceau  had  repressed  his  desire 
for  the  Saar  Valley,  or  Lloyd  George  had  repressed  his  de 
sire  for  the  German  colonies,  or  Orlando  had  repressed  his 
desire  for  Italy's  just  claims  in  Kamchatka.  These  men 
would  have  been  walking  complexes  for  the  rest  of  their 
lives.  They  might  have  become  insomniacs,  or  gone  stale 
on  their  golf,  or  lost  their  taste  for  the  theater,  or  something 
equally  fatal." 

"  Then  the  Germans,  by  your  reasoning — "  I  said. 

"  Exactly,"  he  said.  "  Everybody  took  a  hand  at  repress 
ing  them  and  the  result  is  that  they  don't  sleep  at  all.  They 
sit  up  nights  calling  everybody  names.  Or  take  my  coal 
dealer.  In  my  thoughtless  moments,  as  I  look  around  the 
cellar,  I  call  him  a  pirate.  But  that  is  a  selfish  view.  Isn't 
it  best  for  the  world  after  all  that  the  coal  man  should  have 
my  pocketbook  if  all  his  normal  instincts  pull  him  that  way? 
Repress  that  fellow's  desires  for  my  money  and  he'll  prob 
ably  go  home  and  beat  his  wife." 

"  But  Williams,"  I  said,  "  that's  not  the  way  to  argue. 
You  don't  go  back  far  enough;  you  don't  go  back  at  all. 
Does  it  occur  to  you  that  if  that  coal  man  hadn't  been  re- 


256  WILLIAMS 

pressed  in  some  other  way  he  wouldn't  now  be  charging  you 
a  hysterical  price  for  coal?  " 

Williams  weighed  the  point  in  his  own  honest  fashion. 

"  You  mean,"  he  said,  "  that  if  the  coal  man  had  not  re 
frained  from  beating  his  wife  he  wouldn't  now  be  robbing 
me?'7 

"  Exactly,"  I  said.  "  Some  one  has  to  pay,  you  see,  for 
that  coal  man's  attainment  of  the  full  and  zestful  life;  if  it 
isn't  you,  it  must  be  his  wife.  If  a  man  is  not  to  have  fits 
himself,  he  should  be  allowed  to  give  somebody  else  nervous 
prostration.  It's  the  law  of  compensation.  Twenty-five 
years  ago  we  repressed  our  children  altogether  too  much. 
They  were  not  allowed  to  eat  except  what  we  thought  good 
for  them.  They  were  not  to  speak  until  spoken  to.  They 
had  to  go  to  Sunday  school.  What  is  the  result?  They  are 
now  grown  up  and  establishing  new  poetry  magazines." 

"  That  is  quite  an  idea,"  he  said. 

"  It  is  virtually  your  own,"  I  said,  modestly.  "  And  it's 
an  idea  for  parents  to  keep  in  mind  when  they  sit  down  to 
read  the  paper  at  night  and  the  young  people  begin  to  ham 
mer  down  nails  or  play  jazz  on  the  Orpheola.  Your  first 
impulse  is  to  take  the  hammer  away  and  send  them  to  bed; 
but  remember  the  consequences." 

"  They  will  grow  up  repressed,"  he  said. 

"  They  will,"  I  said.  "  And  that  is  the  bitter  alternative 
— whether  children  shall  grow  up  nervous  or  parents  shall 
be  driven  crazy." 

Williams  looked  glumly  out  of  the  window. 

"  One  longs  for  Betelgeuse,"  he  said. 

"  You  might  try  B.  L.  T.,"  I  suggested, 


FALLACY  OF  DISTANCE 

WILLIAMS  said  his  objection  to  the  new  realism  was 
'  that  it  went  just  as  far  wrong  in  one  direction  as 
Pollyanna  did  in  the  other.  It  is  quite  true  that  people  are 
often  worse  than  they  pretend  to  be.  But  had  it  ever  oc 
curred  to  me  how  often  people  were  much  better  than  they 
pretended  to  be? 

I  told  Williams  that  the  thought  had  occurred  to  the 
author  of  the  Iliad,  the  Mahabharata,  Isaiah,  the  Platonic 
Dialogues,  St.  Augustine,  the  collected  works  of  Shakespeare, 
Browning,  and  William  Dean  Howells,  and  now  and  then 
it  had  obtruded  itself  on  my  own  consciousness. 

"  Now  take  the  children  in  Central  Europe,"  said  Wil 
liams.  We  were  having  lunch  and  he  indicated  a  placard  on 
the  wall.  It  had  an  ingenious  arrangement  of  transparent 
slots,  of  isinglass  presumably,  where  one  might  deposit  any 
coin  from  a  nickel  to  a  silver  dollar  and  see  the  total  mount 
up  into  a  visible  column  of  so  many  real  meals  for  so  many 
hungry  children. 

"  For  the  last  seven  years,"  said  Williams,  "  we  have  been 
giving  and  giving  until  people  now  say  thay  are  tired  of 
giving.  So  they  say.  What  they  do;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is 
to  drop  half  a  dollar  down  the  slot — after  seven  years.  Or 
take  China.  Remind  a  man  of  the  famine  in  China  and 
he  tells  you  that  China  is  pretty  far  away  and  that  charity 
should  begin  nearer  home,  and  why  can't  the  Chinese  look 

257 


258  WILLIAMS 

after  their  own  sufferers,  and  that  he  might  as  well  let  you 
have  a  couple  of  dollars  since  somebody  in  any  case  would 
take  it  away  from  him  to  relieve  somebody  in  Sumatra." 

Williams  said  it  was  all  the  more  strange,  this  busi 
ness  of  saving  people  in  Austria  and  China  because  here 
in  this  big  city  people  seemed  to  be  so  little  interested  in 
their  own  neighbors. 

"  Why  should  they?  "  I  said.  "  The  chances  of  anybody 
starving  in  the  next  apartment  are  virtually  nil." 

"  Do  you  know  the  people  next  door?  "  said  Williams. 

"  I  know  that  they  take  the  Times  and  the  World,"  I  said, 
"because  I  get  up  rather  early  on  Sundays;  and  I  know 
that  they  take  three  bottles  of  Grade  A.  But  I  have  never 
seen  them." 

"  That  is  what  the  city  does  to  the  spirit  of  neighborli- 
ness,"  said  Williams  who  commutes  and  tries  to  practise  all 
the  primitive  virtues. 

"  But  why  should  I  be  neighborly?  "  I  said.  "  It's  dif 
ferent  when  it  comes  to  my  feelings  for  the  people  in  China. 
You  remember  Voltaire's  old  problem?  " 

Williams  said  he  thought  I  had  omitted  somebody. 

"  Voltaire  put  this  moral  problem,"  I  said.  "  If  you  were 
exceedingly  hard  up,  desperately  hard  up,  and  if  you  knew 
that  by  merely  wishing  the  thing  you  could  kill  some  rich 
Chinese  mandarin  8,000  miles  away  whom  you  had  never 
seen  or  heard  of  and  inherit  his  possessions,  would  you  do 
it?" 

"  I  would  not,"  said  Williams. 

I  congratulated  him  on  his  excellent  bringing  up  but 
said  that  was  not  the  point.  When  Voltaire — if  it  was  Vol- 


FALLACY  OF  DISTANCE  259 

taire-said  a  Chinese  mandarin  he  might  as  well  have  said 
somebody  in  Mars.     But  that  was  nearly  2oo  years  ago. 
To-day  you  couldn't  wish  a  Chinese  plutocrat  to  death  with- 
out  getting  yourself  into  very  serious  personal  difficulties. 
That  Chinaman  might  be  the  president  of  a  bank,  and  his 
sudden  demise  might  knock  the  bottom  out  of  the  silk  mar 
ket  and  the  Far  East  might  be  swept  by  a  business  panic, 
and  silver  exchange  might  be  disrupted,  and  American  har 
vester  factories  might  shut  down,  and  the  rest  is  easy  to  see. 
« In  other  words,"  I  concluded,  "  the  chances  are  that  I 
could  more  safely  destroy  somebody  in  the  apartment  over 
my  own  than  slay  the  man  in  China.    As  things  are,  the  gen 
tleman  in  Peking  may  be  much  more  my  neighbor  than  the 
man  on  the  same  dumb-waiter." 
Williams  said  I  was  anti-social. 

I  denied  the  fact.    I  said  that  when  he  preached  neigh- 
borliness  to  a  man  living  in  Apartment  sC  he  was  simply 
yielding  to  the  fallacy  of  distance.    He  was  only  indulging 
himself  in  the  common  sentimentality  which  would  import 
the  simple  and  real  virtues  of  the  open  country  into  town 
where  they  had  little  meaning.    If  people  in  sC  and  sD 
fail  to  turn  to  each  other  in  illness  or  distress  the  reason 
is  that  there  is  no  need.    The  doctor  lives  two  dodrs  away, 
the  drugstore  is  on  the  corner,  and  both  are  accessible  by 
telephone.    There  is  no  use  in  forcing  neighborly  relations 
upon  a  neighbor  with  whom  you  never  run  to  fires,  whom 
you  never  help  in  putting  up  a  barn,  whom  you  never  join 
in  a  posse  comitatus,  with  whom  you  never  go  out  to  break 
open  the  roads  in  winter,  whose  lawn-mower  you  never  bor 
row,  whose  hens  never  wander  into  your  garden,  whose  chil- 


260  WILLIAMS 

dren  never  steal  your  apples,  and  who  in  every  way  is  per 
fectly  capable  of  looking  after  himself.  I  said  the  point  in 
being  neighborly  was  not  proximity  but  contact. 

Williams  said  it  was  a  pity  just  the  same. 

I  said  it  was,  but  not  in  the  sense  he  meant.  There  was 
a  debt  of  neighborliness  we  did  owe  to  a  great  many  people. 
But  unfortunately  life  is  so  arranged  that  we  seldom  strike 
contact  with  those  whose  lives  touch  closely  upon  our  own. 
And  I  mentioned  Central. 

"  The  telephone  girl?  "  he  said. 

I  said  yes.  I  wondered  if  one  man  in  a  hundred  thou 
sand  in  New  York  knew  anything  of  the  girl  on  his  wire  ex 
cept  as  a  voice;  and  yet  she  was  more  essential  to  his  busi 
ness  and  his  family,  to  his  victories  and  his  sorrows,  than 
few  neighbors  in  town  or  country  can  ever  be  to  each  other. 
Who  was  this  girl  that  fetched  for  him  doctors  and  taxicabs, 
who  gave  him  Chicago  or  the  superintendent  downstairs, 
who  carried  his  vital  business  secrets  and  his  conventional 
fibs?  Was  she  tall,  short,  blue-eyed,  red-haired,  what? 

And  I  suggested  that  instead  of  the  neighborhood  system 
we  needed  something  like  the  Soviet  system. 

Williams  said  mildly  that  sometimes  the  telephone  did  act 
just  like  that. 

"  The  Soviet  system,"  I  said,  "  would  substitute  the  oc 
cupational  unit  of  representation  for  the  geographical  unit. 
It  would  have  a  Congressman  elected  not  by  a  group  of 
people  who  happen  to  live  in  the  same  block  but  who  have 
the  same  economic  interest,  doctors,  or  bookkeepers,  or 
street-cleaners,  or  school-teachers;  in  other  words,  people 
who  have  real  contacts. 


FALLACY  OF  DISTANCE  261 

"  But  what  do  I  know  of  the  people  who  work  for  me  and 
with  me?  Central  is  not  alone.  She  is  one  of  a  group  of 
Voices,  Noises,  Bells,  Knocks,  Shuffles,  which  make  up  the 
great  Unknown  of  my  real  neighbors.  While  it  is  still  dark 
I  am  roused  to  a  greater  enjoyment  of  my, warm  bed  by  the 
clink  of  bottles  in  the  hall.  It  is  the  milkman  whom  I  have 
never  seen.  A  slide  and  a  thud  outside  the  door  is  the  news 
paper  carrier.  I  get  up  and  shave  in  hot  water  provided 
by  a  furnace  man  who  once  a  year  at  Christmas  time  be 
comes  a  voice  up  the  dumb-waiter,  but  nothing  else.  You 
commuters  know  your  engine  driver,  and  Mr.  Harding  has 
revived  Mr.  Roosevelt's  human  habit  of  shaking  hands  with 
him  at  the  end  of  a  journey.  But  I  don't  know  my  motor- 
man  except  as  the  occasional  fleeting  shadow  of  a  striped 
jumper  and  a  gray  mustache.  I  know  nothing  whatever 
of  the  lady  in  Wanamaker's  who  sends  my  change  up  in  a 
tube.  Here  is  an  army  of  men  and  women  who  every  day 
hold  my  comfort,  my  health,  and  my  life  in  their  hands,  but 
I  do  not  know  them.  Whereas  my  next-door  neighbor  has 
nothing  in  common  with  me." 

"  But  how  do  you  know?  "  said  Williams. 


THE  END 


LOAN  DEPT 


39943      1 


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